


the backpacker's guide to the aftermath of gap year hookups

by heyfightme



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Hook-Up, Hooking up with a stranger, M/M, One Night Stands, Travel, going to europe to find yourself, secretly famous
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-15
Updated: 2017-11-21
Packaged: 2018-11-14 12:47:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11208393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heyfightme/pseuds/heyfightme
Summary: or, how to find yourself (and a minor obsession) at the end of six months in europe“Were you anywhere before Athens?” Jack asks after a while, and though it’s a standard question for people met in backpackers’ hostels –where have you been? Where are you going?– Eric still hears it more genuinely than those who’ve asked him previously. Almost like Jack is actuallyinterested.In which Eric Bittle absconds from Georgia with half a year of hard-earned savings, and makes the most of his six months before starting college living a backpacker’s dream in Europe.On the final night of his travels, the night before a giant reality check and with the threat of a future looming over him, he meets a fellow traveler.There is etiquette, for sure, about hooking up in a hostel dorm.





	1. or, how to find yourself (and a minor obsession) at the end of six months in europe

**Author's Note:**

> This is heavily indulgent, thoroughly inspired by my own travels (although I haven't done a six-month stint like Bitty), and pushed over the line by the thoughts of Summer to come.
> 
> I was also inspired to finish it off by reading **[all the sights of paris](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11110836)** by the wonderful [writingonpostcards](http://archiveofourown.org/users/writingonpostcards/pseuds/writingonpostcards) ([17piesinseptember](http://17piesinseptember.tumblr.com/) on tumblr), which is a beautiful travel-based fic more than worth the read. It left me feeling properly wistful for Paris.
> 
> This one is supposed to be a little rom-com ridiculous, a lot wanderlust.
> 
>  
> 
> It's dedicated to those ones I fell in love with in far away cities (and, of course, the cities as well).

 

Thinking about his exploded backpack – shorts and sweatshirts everywhere, toiletries tumbled from their bag, socks unrolled and mismatched – Eric wants to cry.

 

It’s the prospect of packing, he tells himself, and not the idea that once he does, that’s _it_. That the next morning, he’ll be lugging his backpack onto the train to Athens international airport, and he’ll be boarding the first of a whole flowchart of flights to hurtle his way back to that _other_ Athens.

 

He wants to see his family. He does. He wants to hug his mama, and shake his daddy’s hand, and smell the magnolias in the vase in their kitchen. Even if it is only for a few weeks before he heads off to college, he wants to be in his childhood home. He wants to be in Madison. He wants to be in Georgia. He _does_.

 

But.

 

Eric looks out at the view: the lambent orange of the sun; the watercolor sky; the humming gold of the ruins. He can smell them, he thinks. He can smell the gold of them at least, the warmth in the air that Eric _knows_ isn’t just from the heat.

 

The air is clearer here. It may be noisy – the beeps and rumbles of the traffic in the street below, the tourist voices, the portly Greeks ushering passers-by into their restaurants – but there’s a peace to it. Some clarity. Something that maybe Eric’s only getting so emotional about now because he knows he’s leaving it all soon.

 

He sips at his beer, and lifts his sandaled feet to rest them on the table.

 

The sigh he lets out is only half-forced in its wistfulness, his eyes being drawn unavoidably back to the Acropolis. It does glow; he knows he’s not imagining it.

 

“Um.”

 

The deep voice jerks him from his reverie, serving to make him slop a little bit of beer down his shirt.  
“Oh, shit!” Eric wipes at it ineffectually, before deciding it doesn’t really matter; he’ll be able to do laundry at home anyway.

 

 _Home_.

 

He pushes down on the thought and looks up to the new arrival.

 

The guy is tall, at least by Eric’s standards, and has a mussed shock of dark hair, pushed from his forehead by a pair of sunglasses. There’s a relatively thick beard about his face, but it does little to hide the amused set of his mouth. There are other things Eric _definitely_ notices about him – his sharp cheekbones, his sweetly blue eyes, the rugged bent in his nose – but these seem secondary to his general expression: it toes between blank and smiling, an optical illusion of a look.

 

“Hi. Hello.” Eric wonders if he sounds as startled to this stranger as he feels.

 

“Hi. Didn’t mean to scare you.” There’s something thick in his words, something accented and sticky. Eric decides wants more of it. “I was just wondering if I could sit with you.”

 

Eric can’t help but look out across the rooftop; there’s no one else there. Until this moment, he had been completely alone in his enjoyment of the sunset. It was probably that everyone else in the hostel was getting ready for a night out. He’d felt lucky with it, the solitude.

 

He looks back to the stranger. “Um,” he manages eloquently.

“I have beer.” The guy does, indeed, hold up a six-pack of Alphas. If his general attractiveness – and yes, even with the beard and the jock-tragic outfit, Eric can admit he’s attractive – weren’t enough to pique Eric’s interest, the promise of continuing to drown his sorrows certainly is.  
“Well, who could refuse an offer like that? Please yourself.” He indicates the chair opposite, but the stranger rounds the table to take the seat next to Eric. It makes sense: facing Eric, this guy wouldn’t be able to appreciate the view. The Acropolis is now fiery in the lowering sun, not just gold, but burning with that ruddy orange of sunset.

 

The guy settles himself in, wresting a can from the six-pack and cracking it open to take a sip before extending his free hand to Eric.  
“I’m Jack.”  
Eric shakes his hand. It’s a little cold, and a little wet, from handling the beer. “Eric Bittle. Pleasure to meet you.”

 

A silence immediately settles between them, something natural and, dare Eric say it, comforting. This guy – Jack – has a calmness, a solemnity, to him. It’s the opposite of what Eric’s used to. He finds he doesn’t mind it.

 

He also finds himself looking to Jack, just brief snatches of looks, but enough to catch the way the sun glints across his profile. To catalogue the gleam of it in his eyelashes. To see how it turns the blue of his eyes mirror-like.

 

Lord, but he _is_ attractive.

 

“So,” Jack says, and Eric starts, thinking he’s been caught staring. Ogling, if he’s being honest. Jack, however, just takes a swig of beer and sucks the remnants off his top lip as he looks over to Eric wholly. “You been in Athens long, Bittle?”  
Eric raises an eyebrow at the use of his last name, but chooses not to mention it. They are strangers, Eric supposes, and Jack may have some strict concepts of politeness with people he doesn’t know.  
“Almost a week,” he tells Jack, “but I’m going home tomorrow.”  
Jack nods. “The States?”  
“Well now, how’d ya guess _that_?” Eric turns up his drawl, rolling his eyes to match his vowels.  
“Boston, right?” It’s so deadpan that for a moment, Eric isn’t sure Jack’s not being serious. However, something flashes behind his eyes, and Eric lets out a snort.  
“Yeah, I’m headed back to _Hah-vahd_.” He knows it’s a bad imitation, plays it up on purpose, and it even earns him a flicker of a grin. Bolstered, Eric continues. “You been here long?”

 

Something twitches in Jack’s expression, a raising of his brow and a minute bite of his lip, but it’s gone as quick as it appeared. More obviously, he shakes his head. “I was in Turkey, going along the coast. Started in, ah, Fethiye, and worked my way up to Istanbul. Flew in to Athens this afternoon. Lucked out with this hostel, eh?” He casts a significant look out at the view, and Eric can’t help but follow the jerk of his head. The sun is now making the trees cast long shadows, the Roman Agora turned into a painting by the play of light and shade.

“It said ‘rooftop bar’ when I booked it, but I really wasn’t expecting anything like this. Other hostels I’ve been in say ‘rooftop bar’, and your view is like, the side of a taller building. I’ve been up here every night this week. Barely anyone even comes up here. Not until after sunset, anyway.”  
“They’re missing out,” Jack agrees, voice graveled and low. He takes a swig of his beer, and Eric follows suit.

 

The silence settles again, both of them watching the shadows get longer and the light glinting off cameras of people watching the sunset from the Aeropagus.

 

“Were you anywhere before Athens?” Jack asks after a while, and though it’s a standard question for people met in backpackers’ hostels – _where have you been? Where are you going?_ – Eric still hears it more genuinely than those who’ve asked him previously. Almost like Jack is actually _interested_.

 

“I’ve been travelling for, um, six months at this point. I started in Paris, of course… I went around France for a bit, gained about twenty pounds… skipped across to London…” He draws it out in the air with his finger, an invisible map that Jack tracks with his eyes. “I took a train to Edinburgh – did you know you can do that? Just, cross over to different countries by train. That’s what I’ve been doing mostly. Sometimes buses, but – _yuck_ , honestly. Also, buses on the continent are less likely to have English-speaking drivers or announcements, and I must confess I’m _hopeless_ with languages. Pro tip for you, if you’re planning on going around with public transport.” He drops Jack a wink, the unsolicited advice being received with a nod just too serious to be _actually_ serious – just as facetious as Eric’s comment. “I got stranded in Reykjavik for about a week, but let me tell you, there are worse places to be. Scandinavia as a whole is _lovely_ , and I got to see it in the _snow_.” He sighs, mostly unintentionally, but also being a bit purposefully theatrical. “It’s a very – a very _distinct_ feeling, walking around during a snowfall in Stockholm at midnight. And then, um… Spain, Italy of course – gained back all that weight I’d been working hard to get off – and… _Germany_ : lord, but Berlin is weird. The Balkans! A few other Slavic countries. Prague. Jack, Prague is so beautiful. Ugh, I feel like I’m forgetting so many places. I’ve been keeping track on my blog.” He takes a sip of his beer, holding it in his mouth momentarily to mull it over. “Croatia, and I took a few buses down through Albania and Montenegro to get to Greece. I stopped in Delphi for a night, and then – here I am.” He laughs, only partly without humor. “Broke as all get out and headed home in the morning.”

 

Jack whistles, a loopy noise that betrays some sense of being overwhelmed. The silence encroaches again, but then: “Bet you’re looking forward to heading back, eh?”

 

Eric shakes his head before he can stop himself.

 

Jack raises his eyebrows, and Eric clamps down on his bottom lip with his teeth, feeling his face heat with embarrassment.  
“God, you must think I’m completely selfish. I’ve been gone for _six months_ , and I’m only giving myself back to my mama for _three weeks_ before I go to college. I’m a bad son. I’m a bad _person_.”

Jack shakes his head, once, but it’s emphatic. He swallows visibly. “You’re going to college?”

Eric nods. “Gap year, you know? It was a struggle enough to convince them to let me take the time off, and that was when I said I’d only be working so I’d have money to help me at school. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her cry as much as when I told her I wanted to go to Europe for half the year.”

“But – they let you come?” There’s something like confusion in Jack’s tone, and he’s not even pretending to watch the sunset any more. He’s turned bodily in his chair to face Eric, beer sweating untouched on the table. His expression is once again blank, but open.

“I think _let_ is too strong a word. They didn’t stop me, let’s put it that way. We’ll probably be lucky if Mama doesn’t have a heart attack when she sees me; not only has her baby boy lost his puppy fat, he’s shaved half his hair off and gotten a tattoo. She won’t hardly recognize me.”

Eric can’t miss the way Jack’s eyes rake over his person. “I don’t see a tattoo.”

 

The heat is back in Eric’s cheeks.

 

“Yes, well, I suppose that one may escape her attention, as it’s not in a place I’d generally display to my mother.”

 

Something like interest glints briefly in Jack’s gaze, something almost blazing, but it’s replaced by amusement just as quickly.  
“You’re an adult.”  
“Yes, I’m glad you’ve noticed,” Eric agrees.

Jack snorts. “I just mean – you can make your own choices.”

“Ah, I see you’re not from the South.”

“I’m Canadian.” Again, it’s a deadpan delivery, but Eric’s starting to catch on – he lets himself laugh without hesitation.

“You sound a little more _fancy_ than that, Mr. Jack.”

Jack wrinkles his nose slightly at the name, but shrugs and says, “Montréal.”

“Is France in your plans?”

Jack shakes his head forcefully, and says “ _no_ ” with such certainty that Eric is a little startled. Jack seems to realize how he came across, and tries to smooth it over with a shrug. “Every time I go to France, someone pretends they can’t understand me because of my accent. They’re francophone elitists.”

 

He sounds so truly disgruntled that Eric feels badly when the laugh bursts out of him. He covers his mouth, trying to seem apologetic, but though Jack keeps an annoyed stare on him, it tics with the threat smile.

 

“So, what _is_ in the stars for you on this visit to the Mediterranean?”

Jack eases back in his chair, hoisting his legs onto the table in a mirror of Eric’s pose. Eric can’t help but notice the way his shorts pull across his thighs – his frankly _huge_ thighs, thick with muscle, and smattered with hair below the hem of his shorts. Eric is musing on what it might feel like to be between those thighs, when Jack coughs slightly and snaps him out of it.

“Well, Turkey obviously –” relief floods through Eric’s body as a cool wave when he realizes Jack hadn’t caught him – “and Greece; Athens for a few days, some islands. I’m going up to Delphi too. And then, um, Croatia. Dubrovnik and Split, probably. We’ll see. Then, ah, back to the States late August. I start work again in October, but prep starts earlier.”

 

Eric nods along, the “what do you do?” halfway out of his mouth when Jack also continues speaking with a “do you want to --?” They edge around each other, back and forth with _you go_ , _no you go_ , before Jack finally huffs a laugh and holds up a hand.  
“I wanted to ask if you would like to grab some dinner.”

 

Eric thinks to the tumble of his belongings across his dorm bed, and the fact that the sun is mostly all gone, leaving the city and the ruins and the heat in the suspension of twilight. He thinks about his early wake up, and dealing with the impending exhaustion of travel the next day.

 

He _knows_ he should just go and pack, and get to sleep. Still, he says, “I’d love to.”

 

* * *

 

There is absolutely no attractive way to eat a Souvlaki. And yet, Eric finds himself not caring, and digging in to his wrap with reckless abandon. His no-fucks-given attitude is validated when Jack does the same. They give each other full-cheeked smiles, Jack with a dribble of garlic sauce escaping from his lips into his beard.

“You know,” Eric tries, having to chew and swallow a few more times before the words come out understandably, “I was a bit skeptical about fries in a sandwich to start with. But _my god_ , they are disgustingly good. I’m probably fifty percent Souvlaki at this point. Maybe it’s good I’m going home tomorrow; saves me from dying of high cholesterol at age twenty.”

Jack snorts inelegantly, and immediately has to bring his hand to his mouth to cover the escaping meat chunks from Eric’s sight.

 

Somehow, it’s stupidly endearing.

 

They walk through the streets of Monastiraki, devouring their Souvlaki, conversation lilting and light: the things Eric had seen in Athens, the things Jack plans to see. When they’ve finished their dinner, Jack balls up the wrappers and lobs them into a nearby trashcan. Though he walks from then on with his hands in his pockets, the way his elbow knocks against Eric’s arm – it can’t be accidental.

 

Their stroll takes them along the edge of the Roman Agora, wending around darkened paths. Away from the main streets, it’s quieter. The heat still feels oppressive, still coats all of Eric inside and out, but there’s a freshness to it. He inhales deeply. There’s a hint of eucalypt in the air, and something headier and sweeter.

“I’m going to miss this,” he confesses.

 

It’s an opening for a joke, some sort of jibe that Jack could make, but instead he just hums.

 

“Of course, I’ll be going _back_ to heat as well. Even if it is getting on later summer.”

 

He tells Jack about summers in Georgia, the quiet making his voice low. He tells Jack about making huge vats of sweet tea with his moomaw, and barbecuing with his daddy, and sweltering over a stove waiting for the jam to reduce with his mama. He tells Jack about mornings so sticky, you feel your trainers about to peel off on the pavement. He tells Jack about driving up the hill and sitting in the back of the truck to watch the fireworks on Fourth.

“Sounds nice,” Jack tells him, and reciprocates with stories of Canadian winters – shinny on lakes with his dad, his mom buying him maple candies chilled on trays of fresh snow, long nights in front of a fire as a family.

 

“But, you know, not really in years. Haven’t lived there properly in – what is it now, five years? This’ll be the sixth. And I mean, technically I’ve been out of home since I was about twelve. Home for the holidays and all that, but I was at a boarding school. And then – ah. Yeah. Moved to the States.”

Eric turns wide eyes on him. He looks somehow sharper in the night, more edges and less glow. “No college?”

Jack shakes his head. He doesn’t seem willing to elaborate, and Eric isn’t willing to push. Though he’s feeling a large mix of things in this moment, the fact is they _don’t_ actually know each other.

 

Eric can’t help wondering what he could do to change that.

 

“Hey.” Jack nudges him, pointing towards the fluorescence of a gelato shop. “Dessert?”

“Well, I’ve never been one to turn down a bit of sugar.”

 

Jack makes an aborted movement, almost like he was about to lean in to Eric – with what intentions, Eric can only wildly speculate. Jack pauses, stooped slightly, before visibly shaking himself and straightening.

 

Maybe Eric’s dehydrated from the heat. The possibility of _another_ kind of sugar seems vaguely hysterical.

 

Thankfully, Jack seems unbothered by whatever just occurred. He nudges Eric again, directing them towards the shop. He waves off Eric’s attempts to pay, just as he had at the Souvlaki stand.

“You were literally just saying you were broke. And anyway, Bittle – I assure you I’m good for it.”

Despite the niggling discomfort of allowing someone he’s just met to buy him food, much louder is the hope that this means it’s something slightly _more_ than two travelers staving off isolation in a strange city.

 

It’s been a developmental six months. Eric had more than one reason for wanting to get the _heck_ out of Georgia. But, frankly speaking, there’s only so far one can go in the bathroom of a club and no _way_ was he going back to some European mystery man’s apartment.

 

This, though. They’re staying in the same hostel. Eric’s leaving in the morning. Jack knows this, and yet he’s still paying for Eric’s food, and bumping into him accidentally-on-purpose, and is now watching Eric absently lick a trickle of gelato from his wrist with an expression that can only be described as _smoldering_.

 

Huh.

 

“Hey, do you – ah, do you want to come back to my room?”

 

Jack’s eyebrows climb up his forehead with shocking speed. Eric is seconds from backtracking, a breath from making some excuse about wanting to change or grab something or –

But then Jack’s smiling, saying, “yeah, that’d be good,” and Eric feels his blush in his _toes_.

 

* * *

 

 

Eric can’t even bring himself to care when he ushers Jack into the dorm room and they happen upon a veritable bomb site. His belongings, the entire contents of the backpack he’s been carting around for six months, is strewn across the bunk he’d been assigned a week ago.

“I have to pack first,” he tells Jack firmly, and Jack nods before, surprisingly, leaning to pick up a crumpled t-shirt. He begins to fold-and-roll it, clear skill of an expert, and shoves it to the bottom of Eric’s backpack once it’s pointed out to him.

 

With Jack helping, Eric’s pack is bulging and secured within twenty minutes.

 

There’s no-one else in the dorm currently, though it sleeps six. Eric has been in it the longest, and it almost feels odd to see his bed free of his own belongings. That is, until Jack stoops to fit inside, scooting back to lean against the wall. The length of his legs hangs over the edge comically, and he’s curled in on himself in a way Eric can’t help but chuckle at. Still, he clambers into the bunk next to Jack. Touching him is unavoidable; the space is, at a most favorable description, cramped.

 

“Hang on,” Jack mutters, leaning across Eric to snag a sheet from where it’s bundled at the end of the bed. He kicks his own shoes off – Eric follows suit – and hoists his legs into the bed before going about hanging the sheet from the edges of the top bunk, tucking is between the mattress and the frame to allow it to fall around Eric’s bed like a curtain.

 

It leaves them in semi-darkness, the sheet fluttering slightly from the breeze coaxed in by the open window. Eric can still hear the Athens streets, the chattering of voices from the rooftop above them, footsteps passing in the hallway. Within the secrecy of a bedsheet-hung bunk-bed, though, he is inches from Jack’s face and feels something more than heat prick across his skin.

 

“Neat trick,” he tells Jack, and gets a smirk for the compliment.

“I haven’t hooked up in a dorm since I was a teenager, but it’s like riding a bike. I’ve got a few things up my sleeve.”

 

Jack adjusts himself against the wall, leaning heavily on one elbow to get low enough that his head isn’t hitting the slats of the top bunk. He’s got one leg bent up, but the other flopped casually towards Eric. It serves to spread his legs entirely, pulling the fabric of his shorts across his groin.

 

Eric doesn’t even bother to avert his eyes.  
“So that’s what this is, then? A hook up?”  
“Figured we were on the same page.” Jack’s voice is coming low and deep, words blurring together through the mumbling and his accent. Eric shifts towards him.

“The page where we’re about to do the sleaziest of sleazy things and _hook up_ , as you say, in a hostel dorm.”

Jack leans in a little closer, and Eric can almost taste the remnants of his lemon gelato. “If it’s so sleazy, maybe we shouldn’t.” Even as he says it, though, he grazes his lips against Eric’s, and then it’s just _logical_ for Eric to wrap a hand around his neck and crush their mouths together properly.

 

Jack kisses filthy from the get-go, using teeth and lips and tongue in a way that makes Eric feel as though he’s being devoured. His beard rubs at Eric’s skin, teasing with friction and feeling all the more dirty. Jack’s hands go to Eric’s waist, drawing him closer and closer until he’s pulling Eric over him as he shifts to lie back on the pillow. That’s how Eric ends up with Jack’s thighs clamped around his waist, and Jack’s hands firmly gripped into his ass.

 

The kiss is punctured by their ragged breaths, Eric just about choking out a moan into the thankfully empty room when Jack ruts against him, sharp and deliberate. With the power of Jack’s legs pressing around him, and the firm bulge of Jack’s pectorals under his hands, Eric _needs_ to feel him, to feel Jack’s bulk pressing him into the mattress, to feel the weight and strength of Jack over his entire body.

 

He pulls back from Jack’s mouth, Jack immediately smudging his lips down to Eric’s neck. A sharp graze of teeth has Eric gasping out, followed by a choked, “I want to feel you on me.”

 

He gets a grunt in response, something guttural and deep, and Jack mutters into his throat, “Easier this way – more room.”

“Come on, just –” Eric tugs at him insistently, trying to roll them over in the small space, hindered by his lack of leverage.

 

Jack grits out a sigh and detaches from Eric’s neck, mumbling, “Hold on, we need to –” before pushing at Eric lightly and indicating that he back against the wall. It’s an awkward maneuver, Jack having to actually duck out from inside their sheet fort and then climb in again once Eric is lying back on the pillows. When he crawls back into the bunk, he’s removed his shirt, and Eric is struck by the _thickness_ of him. His musculature is defined, and there is a smattering of hair over his chest and stomach, but Eric only has a second to look before Jack presses himself down over Eric’s body, immediately gripping into his knee to hoist Eric’s leg up around his own waist.

 

He hums with satisfaction when their lips find each other’s again, resuming his movements from earlier and grinding their pelvises together.

 

Jack’s mass is solid, _real_ , weighting Eric down into the bed. As Jack makes his way down Eric’s neck again, beard scratching against Eric’s skin and leaving a raw feeling in its path, Eric can’t help gritting out, “How much do you weigh?”  
Jack makes a disinterested noise, but replies, “Around two-fifteen,” into the junction of Eric’s collarbone. He scrapes his teeth across the thin skin there as punctuation.

 

Eric isn’t sure why that’s what does it, but it makes him hitch his other leg up around Jack’s waist and thrust upwards, scrabbling at his back with blunt fingernails.

 

Jack pulls away slightly, rewards Eric with a wolfish grin, and dives back into his neck.

“Seeing as we’re being teenagers,” he says, and Eric laughs in a way that ends gasping. Jack’s movements increase in pace and pressure, Eric writhing to meet them. He finds himself being shunted incrementally up the bed, so slaps out a hand to the wall behind his head, pushing back on it. His other hand, though, gravitates down towards Jack’s ass, slipping below the waist of his shorts and gripping in to the muscle underneath.

 

“Take them off,” Jack grunts at him, now pushing in turn at Eric’s shorts.

“Best idea you’ve had all night,” Eric replies, and finds himself laughing into another kiss.

 

* * *

 

It’s a stupid round of ‘never have I ever’ that does it, because apparently eight-drink-deep midterms Shitty likes lame drinking games.

 

Bitty – because that’s what he goes by now, because Eric is a closeted boy from Georgia too timid to say ‘boo’ to a mouse, but _Bitty_ is confident and looks cute in these shorts and chooses not to hook up with huge Australian swimmers if he doesn’t want to, _Holster_ – supposes he could also place blame on Ransom and his partner in crime for what happens next. He knows they’re trying to catch out Lardo, trying to get her to slip on deets about the will-they-won’t-they everyone suspects about her and Shitty.

 

Bitty also knows that he could have gotten away with not drinking at this particular question, because he hasn’t told _anyone_ about his Athens hook-up.

 

Hasn’t told anyone about biting into Jack’s shoulder to stifle a shout when he did come, Jack’s hand around both their cocks and Jack’s mouth panting hot and wet breaths into Bitty’s jaw.

 

Hasn’t told anyone about waking sweat-sticky still under Jack’s full weight, oppressive in the morning heat, and having to prod him awake so Bitty could shower and leave for the airport.

 

Hasn’t told anyone about the amount of moisturizer he’d had to rub into his face, and neck, and _thighs_ , to try and soothe the rampant beard burn that developed there.

 

He especially hasn’t told anyone about the fleeting pain in his chest when Jack had smiled up at him, slow and sleepy when Bitty stood over him with his backpack already hoisted up. About the way Jack had tugged on Bitty’s hand, planted a kiss on his wrist, then pulled him lower to leave one on his lips. About how as Bitty had forced himself to pull away and leave, they had trailed their touch until the barest tips of their fingers were connected, and when Jack’s hand had finally fallen away, Bitty had near wanted to cry.

 

He did, eventually. When he landed in Georgia, and hugged his parents, and went to put his stuff in his room and nap. He’d lay down on his childhood bed, and muffled his sobs in Señor Bun’s stomach.

 

Now, though, he doesn’t _have_ to drink. Because no-one knows anything. So maybe it’s also partially his _own_ fault when Ransom says, “Never have I ever had beard burn – or, like, moustache burn, I guess,” and Bitty takes a long and deep swig from his cup.

 

It’s almost scary how quickly four pairs of eyes swivel towards him.

 

“Oh my god, _yikes_.”

“Eric. Bitty. Bittle,” Holster says, and from the look all of them are wearing, Bitty knows they’ve forgotten entirely about exposing Lardo. Even she’s wearing an expression like the cat that got the cream.

Bitty sighs and puts his hands over his face.

 

“Fine. _Fine_. I guess this is happening, and I know y’all won’t let me _live_ until I tell you, so – it was on my gap year. I only saw him once. I told my parents it was a heat rash. That’s _all_.”

 

When he lowers his hands, he finds the meagre details have only served to make his friends’ expressions more rabid.

“Bitty, you naughty boy.” Shitty’s grin is the scariest of all.

“Please, don’t call me that ever again.”

“It’s always the quiet ones,” Ransom intones solemnly.

“Good Southern boy in the streets, total – uh. Who’s a famous slut from the South?”

Bitty gasps in indignation. “Ex _cuse_ me, Adam Birkholtz, one hookup with one bearded individual does not make me a slut.”

“Check yourself, dude. Not cool. This Haus is a sex-positive zone.” Shitty points an accusing finger at Holster, tone ringing with disappointment.

“Jesus, Shits, it was fuckin’ _joke_.”

 

Bitty takes the inevitable argument as an opportunity to duck into the kitchen and press his face against the fridge.

“Fuck.”

It wasn’t as though he was constantly thinking about Jack. It wasn’t as though he was one of those people who was turning a single sexual encounter into a great romance. It wasn’t as though he was seeing it all through rose-colored glasses and turning it into something it wasn’t.

 

It had been awkward, sure. Their elbows and knees had been in the way. Jack had hit his head on the top bunk on more than one occasion. There was the beard burn, of course.

 

But Bitty couldn’t help but linger on the sunset on Jack’s face on the rooftop, and the way they had nudged each other walking the streets of Athens. On the easy flow of their conversation, the comfortable silences, the genuine mutual interest.

 

On the feel of Jack on him, the solid mass of his body, his hot searching mouth, the way he had taken Bitty apart entirely.

 

He lightly bumps his head against the fridge.

 

It’s a problem.

 

* * *

 

Bitty has been thoroughly reprimanded for disregarding the expansion teams. His argument of “they just don’t have the same chance as legacy teams” is met with a terse “Las Vegas Aces: two Stanley Cups. The Habs: last cup in ‘93. Get your head out your ass, Bits.”

 

He finds himself forcibly wedged between Ransom and Holster on the heinous green couch, arms pinned to his sides and a beer delicately clutched in his hands. The game he’s being forced to watch is one he would normally ignore entirely – Falconers v. Schooners, _double_ expansion and therefore well outside his realm of interest.

 

He keeps up a low-level grumble of a protest as the game time nears, frequent phrases including “I could just as easy watch the highlights” and “neither of them even made the playoffs last year.”

 

It’s during the pregame theatrics that something happens which makes Bitty drop his beer into his lap, spilling it over both himself and Ransom.

 

Ransom jumps up immediately, swiping at the liquid splashed across his white shorts, and Holster falls into Bitty with a booming guffaw.

“Thank you so much, bruh. _So much_.”

“Fuck, Bitty, what did I ever do to you? These are like, in my top five favorite shorts, man.”

 

Bitty can’t reply.

 

He’s still gaping at the screen, gaping at the run-down of stats for the Falconers, at one player in particular – one of their Alternate Captains, and their starting center, Jack Zimmermann.

 

Because it’s _him_ : size magnified by hockey pads, beard in full force, blue eyes darkened with intensity in his player portrait. Jack from Athens. Jack, and easily the best night of Bitty’s life.

 

Bitty knew about Jack Zimmermann, of course, in a vague and tangential way. He’d seen photos of him from his draft, and knew about his legacy, knew about his father, but had never bothered beyond that. Five years of playing had done _wonders_ for him, apparently. Bitty remembers thinking he was handsome, but. This Jack – _my Jack_ , his brain supplies unhelpfully – is a whole other thing entirely.

 

He stands up abruptly, and Ransom’s berating halts in its tracks. Holster also stops laughing.

 

“Bitty – you alright, buddy?”

“Fine!” Bitty hears his own voice, at least an octave too high and decidedly strangled. He coughs, aiming to clear his throat, and tries to pitch it lower. “I’m okay, I’m just – oh, Christ on a fucking cracker.” He slaps both his hands over his face, unable to think of any other way to stop looking at the screen, because Jack Zimmermann is now leading his team through warm-ups and if he weren’t too much to deal with when he’s merely standing there looking blank, the way he moves on the ice is just the last straw.

 

Bitty is vaguely aware of the frantic conversation happening between the other two, but can’t bring himself to do anything except moan pathetically into the cage of his hands.

 

“Should we get Lardo?”

“What’s Lardo gonna do? Poke him and say, ‘cheer up, dude’? She’s useless at this kind of stuff.”

“Shitty?”

Ransom snorts. “I don’t think he needs a naked full-body hug right now. Like, do you _ever_ need a naked full-body hug? But especially now.”

 

Bitty’s need to put others at ease overwhelms his own discomfort in that moment. He drops his hands, and manages to say, “I’m fine,” with some sort of confidence.

 

“I just,” he continues, sighing heavy and long and plonking down on the couch again. The cushion squelches, soaked through from his beer. “Jack Zimmermann.” He gestures dolefully at the TV, now playing highlights from Jack’s previous games.

“Ah,” Ransom says, and settles next to Bitty to lay a comforting hand on his back. “He confounds us all. Fucked if I’m ever going to properly root for the Falcs, even if they do have Alexei Mashkov. I mean, just _look_ at that guy out there, fuckin’ _s’wawesome_ –”

“Rans.”

“Right. Uh, y’know, they’re not my team, but they got good players. And Zimmermann’s out there to wreck shit for sure. I would probably be in love with him if my heart weren’t already pledged to another.”

“Jesus, Rans, probably not helping.” Holster drops down on Bitty’s other side. “Hockey crushes are par for the course, dude. You’re not betraying your team if you like him.”

 

Bitty can’t help groaning again, slumping back into the couch. It makes another disgusting noise, but he figures he deserves it.

“It’s not _that_. I mean, I like him, but I _already_ liked him, I just didn’t _know_ it was him…”

 

Something dawns as Ransom and Holster peer at him with eerily matching expressions. Jack’s an NHL player – a captain, no less, a legacy player and one with impressive stats. He’s the _elite_.

 

And Bitty is sure he would’ve paid more attention if he’d heard that Jack Zimmermann were out.

 

He can’t tell them. He can’t do that, not even if he never sees Jack ever again. It’s not that Bitty doesn’t trust them, but it’s not his secret he’d be revealing. He swallows, and shakes his head.

“You’re right: hockey crush. Not the end of the world. I’ll deal with it.”

 

Still, when the Falconers sweep the Schooners in a five-goal shutout, Bitty can’t help the surge of inexplicable pride he feels.

 

He watches Jack celebrating with his team, slamming into Mashkov and getting wrapped into a yelling group hug, and thinks, _That’s my boy_.

 


	2. or, how to resolve the cognitive dissonance of your celebrity crush being a past one-night-stand

 

Bitty had tried to find Jack.

 

He’d spent his three weeks in Georgia at the end of the summer not only cramming in as much mother-son bonding time as he could manage, but googling every permutation of _jack canadian boarding school_ and _jack canadian moved to us six years ago_ that he could think of.

 

He even tried _jack canadian great butt_ and _jack canadian hot beard_ , and although both searches had wielded a number of highly interesting results, none of them had been the right Jack. His Jack.

 

Jack and their night together were eventually delegated to a two-a.m. thought, the kind that infiltrates when one is at their most vulnerable. The effect of these two-a.m. thoughts was alternately furiously enthusiastic masturbation, or muffled and despondent crying. Sometimes, a confusing combination of the two, which honestly left Bitty more than slightly stunned at himself.

 

Well in to his first college semester, though, and ingratiated into the hockey team with an almost surprising ease, Bitty had found himself wishing he could forget Jack. Away from the prying eyes of his teammates, in dark corners at kegsters, he’d tried for other hookups. He’d very briefly downloaded a dating app, which had really only given him a strong case of second-hand embarrassment. There had even been a few real dates, in the daytime and all, with sweet hand-holding and once an adorable shared milkshake.

 

Bitty had begun the process of allowing Jack to fade into a memory, a story of being young and carefree, a sordid night shared with a stranger in a foreign city.

 

That was, though, all before Bitty saw him playing hockey on national TV. Truthfully mind-blowing hockey.

 

Now, it’s all Bitty can do to _not_ think about Jack.

 

Seeing him out of the context of memory seemed to jolt at the concept that Jack was a tangible thing, almost within reach – in fact, forty-five minutes’ drive away. He ceased to be the _concept of Jack_ , and started to be _Jack Zimmermann_.

 

Bitty doesn’t know the word ‘shame’ as he orders a Zimmermann jersey from the NHL store right after the game.

 

The moment of realization, the blue streak of recognition, is probably when Bitty is on a date – a rugby guy, hazel eyes and close-cropped hair and a compact strength – and Bitty just can’t stop talking. Can’t stop, because every time there’s a moment of silence, it stretches into something tense and awkward. Something uncomfortable. So, Bitty doesn’t let silence happen. He even keeps up his tirade of inane chatter as he thumbs out a discreet _SOS_ text to the group chat, hoping someone is in the area to rescue him from this hell of unease and socially-enforced politeness.

 

He gets his wish in around five minutes’ time when both Lardo and Ransom burst through the door simultaneously, Ransom on the hysterical edge of frantic, Lardo serious and determined. They babble about an “emergency,” a “tragedy,” and hoist Bitty from his chair to frog-march him out the door before he can throw so much as a “sorry, I have to go” at his date.

 

Ransom and Lardo get him out of Annie’s and around a corner away from the windows before they round on him.

“What happened? Are you okay?” Ransom’s voice is a little high, notably worried, and there’s a pinched look around his eyes that confirms Bitty’s assessment of his emotional state.

“What did he do?” Lardo also looks concerned, her worry instead communicated by the stern blankness of her expression.

Bitty feels his own startled look crumple. “Oh, no. Y’all, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to worry you. He didn’t do anything; he was polite, fine. I just couldn’t stay another moment with him.”

 

They both visibly calm, Ransom actually letting out a whoosh of a relieved breath. Lardo hangs her head momentarily, and when she looks back up, there’s a smile dancing around her eyes.

“Dude, we thought this was like, a Code Red situation.”

Bitty groans. “Shoot, I’m _so_ sorry. I couldn’t type a proper message; I had to keep talking or I would’ve _died_.”

The looks Ransom and Lardo are now giving him are near-twinned smirks. They exchange a glance, and Bitty has to take a step back to ready himself for whatever onslaught he is surely about to endure.

 

“Did he say something bad about Beyoncé?” Ransom starts.

“Did he suggest that there’s nothing to be gained from chilling pastry before rolling?”

“Ooh, good one,” Ransom tells Lardo, nudging her side a little. “Did he say the phrase, ‘I just don’t know _why_ anyone would take a gap year’?”

Lardo snickers minutely, before getting the last word. “Did he refuse to believe you are on the hockey team?”

“ _Stop_ ,” Bitty pleads, knowing his tone edges over into whining. He folds his arms, trying to look threatening. If Ransom and Lardo’s titters are anything to go by, it doesn’t work. He sighs, rolling his head back to look at the sky before tipping his gaze down to them resignedly.

 

“He was just – I don’t even know if boring is the right word. I had to talk a lot. There were a lot of silences at the start, and I couldn’t help tryin’ to fill them. It was just. Awkward.”

They both peer at him, confusion building rapidly on their faces. Bitty shifts under their scrutiny, looking to his feet. He can feel the embarrassment seeping into his cheeks.

 

“Bitty,” Ransom begins, uncertainty ringing clear in his tone, “first dates can be awkward. It makes sense for the conversation to not work perfectly.”  
“You’ve never met him before, Bits. It’s almost a definite that that’s weird.”

Ransom nods emphatically, pointing at Lardo with would-be-casual significance.

“It didn’t _have_ to be,” Bitty insists. “It _shouldn’t_ be.”

Lardo shrugs. “Sure. But more often than not, if the first date is just _awkward_ and not, like, an irreparable disaster, that’s a fuckin’ win, bro.”

Bitty shakes his head. He doesn’t know why they’re not _getting_ this. “ _No_ , that’s just not true. It’s not. It can be so much better than that. I shouldn’t have to settle for awkward first dates. There can be silences; I’m not saying you both have to be talking about deep questions and big philosophies the whole time, but it should feel…” He trails off, snatching for the right word, trying to ignore the developing frown on Ransom’s brow. “It should be comfortable,” he decides. His voice ticks up at the end. It’s a surprise, really, picking that word above any others.

 

Ransom snorts. “Yeah, maybe one in a hundred. Come on, Bits, life isn’t a rom com. It’s just, like… the connection takes time sometimes, buddy.”

 

Bitty can’t do much more than nod dumbly, because every functional inch of his brain is circling in on itself, dredging up every minute since he left Greece that he’d thought of Jack – those two a.m. thoughts, for sure, but also the small fond daytime musings that had begun and increased with seeing him on TV. The remembrances of the way he laughed, that graveled chuckle. The cadence of his words, the lilt and roundness of his accent. His simple honesty, and his full-body listening, and his genuine interest in what Bitty had been saying. The comfortable silences.

 

He had had a perfect date. And, more than anything, he wanted another. He wanted it with Jack Zimmermann.

 

* * *

 

Bitty quickly discovers that falling for Jack Zimmermann is the worst thing he could’ve done. His obsession – and he’s not going to pretend it’s anything _but_ that – is a raging maelstrom of emotions brought on by the multiple categories that Jack fills.

 

Bitty hadn’t quite understood the pornographic commentary of any player that Shitty offered up whenever they watched games together, but watching Jack is frankly arousing. Perhaps it was the combination of finesse and athletic intelligence, and brute strength. Whichever, though, Bitty can’t help being captivated by Jack in play, watching with wide eyes and slightly parted lips.

 

It doesn’t help whenever the commentator mentions the size of Jack’s ass. It happens with startling frequency, considering they’re professionals and it’s a nationally broadcast sporting event. They’ll say something like _and we know Zimmermann’s got a lot of lower body power_ and all Bitty will be able to think about is that he knows what that lower body power feels like under his hands.

 

Bitty exercises a saintly level of self-control by not Googling Jack. It feels somehow like an invasion of privacy, even though the information is open-source. The fan in him whispers in the back of his brain, inane questions like _what was that boarding school he mentioned_ and _what was the rest of his childhood like_. The thing that keeps him from typing anything about Jack into any search bar is the overwhelming desire to, slim as the chances are, hear it all from Jack’s own mouth.

 

And then, unavoidably, there are the constant comparisons: every guy he meets, or who approaches him at a party, or who so much as makes eye contact with him in the library, is immediately measured up against Jack. Often on the basis of looks, it also treads into comparing personality. Bitty’s mind is an unending swell of _I bet Jack wouldn’t…_ and _I wonder if Jack would…_

 

Previously, his musings had been based around one unforgettable night and the idea of ‘the one who got away.’ It was easy to fantasize when there was no possibility of it coming to fruition.

 

Now, though, despite Jack’s celebrity and his logical unattainability, Bitty can’t stop himself from envisaging their second date.

 

Despite having withheld all details of his _true_ connection to Jack, his teammates have noticed something.

 

Maybe it’s got something to do with the fact he’s waiting for a batch of muffins to bake in the Haus oven with ‘Smash Into You’ playing on repeat while he watches interviews with Jack on mute. Maybe it’s got something to do with the fact he’s doing this while wearing his Zimmermann jersey.

 

Shitty wanders into the kitchen, and fixes him with a wary look.

 

He crosses to the fridge, takes out a beer, and downs a measurable swig before leaning against the counter to regard Bitty with folded arms.

“Bitty, my guy, what I’m about to say – please know it comes from a place of love, because you are doubtlessly our favorite frog. Like, nothing against Nursey and the guys, but – they don’t bake tight shit for us.”

“I knew you only wanted me for my pastries,” Bitty retorts, pausing the video he’s watching and directing his full attention to Shitty. The screen stops with Jack glancing away from the camera, profile caught sharply regardless of the crusty cap jammed over his hair. It’s gotten longer, and curls from underneath looking thick with sweat. Bitty had been captivated, to say the least.

“It’s more than that, man. Like, you’re a guy from the South, but you’re not a bigoted dick-faced cockhole. Um – I mean, like. You’re not… uh, something less homophobic, but bearing the same sentiment.”

“I would hope you see me as more than just a ‘cockhole,’ mister.” Bitty folds his arms, and raises a judgmental brow. For all his lip service, Shitty still has a long way to go. To his credit though, he holds his hands up apologetically.

“My bad, for real. This isn’t coming out right – I just mean, we all value the fuck out of you, you know? And so we’re all just getting a bit… _concerned_ , that you’re doing some damage to yourself.”

Bitty narrows his eyes. “What’re you gabbing about, Shitty B Knight?”

Shitty gestures to Bitty’s jersey; to Bitty’s phone on the counter; to the room generally, as though to indicate the song still playing.

 

Bitty bites his lip, and shifts his weight between his feet.

 

“I get it, I do: the guy’s a fuckin’ marvel. But this is like… pining, dude. And believe me when I say, putting these NHL big-wigs on pedestals, it just ends badly. They’re going to do something to disappoint you, eventually. Inevitable.”

Bitty has to look away; he can’t quite deal with the pity in Shitty’s eyes. He can’t decide whether, if Shitty knew the truth, it would make him look more, or less pathetic.

 

“I know it’s just a fantasy,” Bitty grits out. “Just a bit of fun.” He tries to make his voice reassuring, firm. Tries to communicate to Shitty that he _knows_ the impossibility of doing anything with Jack, and that’s why he likes it. Tries not to reveal that it’s actually the opposite that’s true: that Bitty has tasted exactly what that tall drink of water is like, and _lord_ is he dehydrated.

 

Shitty seems to accept it. He nods, and claps a hand on Bitty’s shoulder.

“I fuckin’ get it, man. There’s no disappointment if there was no hope in the first place.”

Bitty manages a trilling laugh, a playful wink, and ducks from under Shitty’s hand to check the oven. It seems, though, that Shitty’s not quite done.

“I mean, not being funny, but the dude’s a bore in interviews. Like, he has one interest and everything outside of that one thing just doesn’t exist. He probably wouldn’t be able to handle all of you anyway, Bits.”

 

Bitty bites back on his retort, swallowing the protests that rise up in his throat like bile. Not only did Jack handle all of Bitty – every single inch of him, thoroughly and attentively – he’d done so in a way that had honestly shuddered Bitty’s entire _being_. He was a changed man because of Jack Zimmermann.

 

Shitty, though. Shitty couldn’t know that.

 

* * *

 

 

Bitty does well under the guise of being a superfan. The Falconers merchandise he accumulates quickly surpasses his Dallas Stars collection, meagre though it had been. Chowder is the only one who doesn’t seem to understand: “I just don’t _get_ how you could change teams. Like, what makes a person do that? You said you loved the Stars!”

 

From everyone else, it’s just a relentless barrage of chirping. That, he can deal with.

 

He should probably expect it, though, when he gets summoned to the Haus in early March and the entire team is gathered in the kitchen with expectant looks on their faces.

“What? What did y’all do? I swear, if you called me over here just to bake something –”

Their collective shouts of _Happy Birthday!_ make him clutch at his chest with all the theatrics of a true Southern Belle.

“Good _lord_ ,” he yelps, heart properly rocketing away. A quick shake to regain his composure, and he fixes them all with an unimpressed glare. “You idiots; my birthday’s in _May_. My god, you get so defensive over stereotypes of athletes bein’ dumb, and then you go and mix up two months that start with the same letter. I may not have the best studying mind, but even I ain’t that stupid.”

“Fuck you very much, Bittle,” Shitty replies, and gets a chorus of laughter in response.

“Open it, man,” Nursey drawls from his place near the oven, and it’s only then that Bitty notices the envelope resting on the bench, propped against a bottle of Sriracha. On the front, _BITTY_ is written in huge bubble letters, as though done by a sixth-grader. He suspects Lardo had no hand in it.

 

“I’m not joking; my birthday’s in May. And I don’t need a gift – you really didn’t have to, I swear.” Still, he edges towards the card. Curiosity killed the cat, and all that.

“They know. It’s a time-sensitive present,” Lardo reassures him. She’s sitting on the counter next to the sink, watching with a deeply satisfied smirk about her lips. It doesn’t bode anything good, really.

 

Bitty picks up the envelope and runs a finger along the edge.

“Gift certificate to Williams Sonoma?” he guesses, and a ripple of laughter goes through his gathered friends. With no forthcoming reply, even from Chowder who’s watching the entire thing with a red face and a bitten lip, Bitty picks at the opening with his fingernail.

 

What he pulls out is a ticket: Falconers v. Blue Jackets, in Providence in a week’s time.

 

Bitty nearly chokes on his own tongue.

 

The violence of his physiological reaction to the prospect of being in the same building as Jack again is not something he could’ve predicted. He goes over all cold, gripping at the ticket so hard he can feel the tension in the paper between his fingers. He deliberately relaxes his hold.

“Oh my goodness,” he manages, hearing himself breathy and overwhelmed. Chuckles go through the room again, and Ransom crosses over to pat him on the back.

“Who knew it was so easy to stop you talking?” he jokes, and Bitty elbows him in the stomach.

“ _Rude_. This is just so nice of y’all, I don’t know what to say.”

“I mean, we’re all coming too, but we split your ticket. And the train and stuff.” Holster sidles up as well, and looks dangerously close to ruffling Bitty’s hair before he’s fixed with a stern look. Instead, he pulls Bitty into a just-this-side-of-gruff bear hug.

“These are real good seats,” Bitty mumbles into Holster’s chest.

“Right on the glass,” Chowder pipes up, and Bitty leans away from Holster to offer him a grateful smile. Out of Bitty’s fellow frogs, Chowder is definitely his favorite: supportive and excitable, if Bitty weren’t also a freshman, he thinks he might try to mentor Chowder in some way. As it is, they just get a lot of bubble tea together and complain about Nursey and Dex’s feud. Chowder likes hearing about Bitty’s travels too, which is a bonus.

 

There’s so much genuine warmth in Chowder’s happiness, so much satisfaction because _Bitty_ is happy, that Bitty can’t but help feel guilty that his prevailing emotion, in that moment, is something akin to dread.

 

He stays for the following Happy-Early-Birthday-Bitty party, but afterwards walks alone back to his dorm. He doesn’t have a single coherent thought the whole way, and it’s only when he gets there that he realizes he left his jacket at the Haus.

 

* * *

 

The sheer size of the arena, its thousands of hyped-up fans, and the music thumping out across the ice all only serve to put Bitty’s heart in his throat and keep it there, steady beat vibrating through his entire body. He keeps his arms wrapped around his middle, hands mittened-over by the sleeves of his hoodie. He’d chosen to forgo wearing his Zimmermann jersey, hoping that a simple Falconers t-shirt would stifle the waves of desperation radiating off him, at least a little.

 

He hadn’t realized this is what it would be like. To be _right on_ the glass, able to see the ice at near the same level as the players, close enough that when they come out, he’ll be able to see their faces should they skate past.

 

In all the ways he’d imagined seeing Jack again, none of them had been like this: shatter-proof Perspex between them, as public as they could get.

 

Bitty’s thankful, at least, for Ransom’s Mashkov-induced delirium. With Holster refusing to listen to him, he sits next to Bitty and talks his ear off as they wait for the pre-game theatrics to truly begin. It’s a nice escape, really, someone else at least to focus on – Bitty finds himself searching for Mashkov’s name as the players finally skate out onto the ice, watching his towering figure circle around with his teammates.

 

All it takes, though, is the sight of a single word – _Zimmermann_ – and Bitty forgets about Mashkov entirely. He finds himself unable to look away, even through Jack taking his position on the bench to wait for his line to be called. Jack may be watching the game, but Bitty isn’t. He catalogues Jack’s expressions, watches him shout out to his teammates, nudge whoever is next to him on the bench to make comments, lean back to say something to one of the coaches. He’s talking the whole time, expressive and animated, a reiteration of the Jack who Bitty had met in Athens.

 

Jack’s line is the third to be called, and as he launches himself out onto the ice, Bitty sucks in a harsh breath.

 

The play is fast, and sharp, and when a Blue Jacket winger breaks away from the pack to circle round the boards near where Bitty and his friends are sitting, Jack tears after him.

 

Jack slams the winger into the glass, swiping for the puck. The guy goes down, falling below the boards, and Jack glances through the glass, and he freezes.

 

It’s probably a single second of he and Bitty staring at each other, equally blank, and all Bitty can do is gasp a breath. Jack’s close enough that Bitty can see his pupils, shrunken to pinpricks in the winter of his eyes. It’s probably a single second, and then Jack is crushed against the glass, face contorting with the shock. He pushes back, sends his assailant spinning across the ice, and tears after the wild puck. He doesn’t look back.

 

Bitty almost doesn’t notice Shitty ruffling his hair, shouting, “Holy hell, Bitty! Holy fucking shit!” He lets himself be jostled around by Shitty on his right and Ransom on his left, still tracking the number one on Jack’s jersey as he tears down the ice, passing off to Mashkov, who passes to Robinson, who flicks it back to Jack, who buries it top-shelf.

 

The yelling and jostling gets even worse somehow, and Bitty continues to allow it. Jack on the ice is swamped by his teammates, swept up into a group hug that turns him around, and he’s grinning and shouting as he looks across the ice and right at Bitty.

 

Bitty doesn’t know why he does it, but he presses his hand to the glass.

 

Again, it’s a _second_ , flitting by and then gone, but Bitty swears he sees Jack’s smile get bigger.

 

The players reset for another drop.

 

* * *

 

Being front row, and Bitty still being slightly shell-shocked – _god_ , Jack had looked good, beard dark around his jaw, face red and glistening from play, thoroughly sweaty and disgusting and so powerful-looking that Bitty just wants to _feel it_ – he convinces Ransom and Shitty to wait until the rows behind them clear out before they leave. Everyone else joins the slow-moving crowd going up the stairs and out the exits, but Bitty stays slumped in his seat as Shitty and Ransom give a verbal play-by-play of the entire game. Bitty’s mind spares a single thought for the inconvenience of them lingering when there are probably jobs that need to be done after the crowd leaves, but he can’t find the motivation to move. He stares out at the ice, imagining he can see the tracks made by Jack’s blades distinct from everyone else’s.

 

When they’re approached by an official-looking security guard, Bitty’s apology is out of his mouth as he stands, tugging Shitty out of his seat too. The guard just shakes his head.

“Is one of you Eric Bittle?”

Bitty finds himself nodding, Shitty being the one to cut across aggressively and demand, “Who wants to know?”

“Sir, I’ve been directed to ask if Eric Bittle, sitting against the glass in section one-zero-four would like to come back and meet the team.”

 

Shitty and Ransom go silent, and Bitty barely stops the confused noise he makes. It’s something like a grunt, something like a gasp. The security guard folds his arms impatiently.

“I’m Eric Bittle,” Bitty manages, voice somehow level and low. Ransom is weakly slapping his arm, but he ignores him.

“Alright, you coming or not?”

Even without Shitty and Ransom edging him forward, hissing furiously _don’t you dare say no, bro_ and _ask questions later_ , he would’ve said “yes.”

 

Following the security guard through to the bowels of the stadium – that secret, private area where only players and official team personnel are allowed – Bitty doesn’t quite take in what’s happening. He’s consumed instead with the warring conversation happening in his head, debating on how to greet Jack when he finally sees him again. On the kind of apology he’ll offer for being weird and stalkery and sitting front row at one of his games.

 

He’s thanking every higher power there is that he didn’t wear his Zimmermann jersey.

 

It’s in a nondescript cinderblock corridor that the security guy tells him, “wait here,” and stalks off around a corner. Bitty shoves his hands into his hoodie pockets, and leans back against the wall. He’s not sure if what he’s feeling is nerves, or an intense form of hysterical detachment.

 

There’s a burst of noise momentarily from around the corner, like a door opening, and then it disappears. When it happens again, it’s followed by the dull scraping of someone walking on skates down the carpeted hallway.

 

When Jack rounds the corner, he claps eyes on Bitty and pauses, standing at full height on his skates, still completely padded and hair matted to his head with sweat.

 

It’s somehow better than seeing the Athens sunset glinting off his cheekbones.

 

Bitty can’t make words happen, just stays leant again the wall, eyes wide as Jack sets a determined expression to his face and strides over – well, as much as he can stride balancing on blades.

 

He stops about three feet away, and says, “Hi.”

“I’m sorry,” Bitty blurts out. He rests all of his weight back against the wall. Maybe if he presses hard enough, he’ll just sink right through into nothingness.

Jack frowns at him, quick and deep, cocking his head to the side. “Huh?”

“I shouldn’t have come to your game; it’s weird. God, you’re realizing I’m some kind of stalker and you’re regretting everything – ugh, listen, I promise I won’t say anything. I’ll sign a, um, a non-disclosure thingy, if you want! I won’t ever come to a game. Won’t even watch one. Cross my heart, you’ll never have to think about me again.”

 

“I didn’t remember it right.” Jack’s tone sounds – well, it sounds awed, quiet and appreciative, and he’s looking at Bitty now with a sort of calmness, something of warmth about his eyes. Still, his statement makes no sense.

“Huh?” It echoes in Bitty’s head, a recalling of the stilted way they first met, another repetition.

“Your voice,” Jack says, like it’s obvious. “I didn’t remember it right.”

It rings within Bitty’s ears, left-of-field, a total blind-side. He finds himself again, uncharacteristically, speechless. “Oh,” is all he gets out.

 

“I think my memories did a pretty good job with the rest of you, though.” Jack’s gaze sweeps down Bitty’s body, sliding back up with incremental strokes, more cataloguing than objectifying. Still, when he meets Bitty’s eyes again, his look is dripping with appreciation. “Not quite justice, but pretty good. You look great, Bittle.”

“So do you,” Bitty squeaks out.

Jack chuckles. “Sure, sweating like a fucking pig. I probably reek. Keep your distance, right?”

Bitty laughs weakly in response, doubt that this isn’t some elaborate fantasy creeping through his thoughts. He takes his hands from his pockets and presses them flat against the wall. It’s cold. It grounds him.

“I didn’t know who you were, I promise,” he tells Jack, just like he planned, as honest as he can. “I didn’t figure it out until a few months ago. My friends made me watch a Falconers game and, well. There you were.” He tries to make a joke out of it, shrugging a little and sing-songing the words. Jack chuckles, once, _haha_.

“They forced you to come, eh?”

Bitty shakes his head, emphatic. “ _No_ , I just… to tell the truth, I didn’t go in for the expansion teams much, but then I saw you play, and – god, this is embarrassing. I guess I support the Falconers now.”

“Oh, yeah?” There’s a grin playing about Jack’s mouth, a hint of smugness that Bitty thinks only makes him more appealing. “Who’d you jump ship from? Careful, Bittle,” he warns, tone dry with sarcasm, “there are right and wrong answers to this.”

Bitty looks away, trying to bury his own grin in his shoulder, and mumbles, “The Stars.”

Jack laughs again, louder this time, and it rings down the empty corridor and deep into Bitty’s chest.

 

“So, you like hockey,” Jack continues, still laughing.

Bitty hums.

“And this is all just a huge coincidence.”

Bitty hums again. Jack nods, grin fading to a thoughtful smile. He nods, shifting his weight between his skates. “A coincidence,” he repeats, seemingly to himself.

 

Silence falls between them, in which they smile at each other. Bitty doesn’t get the urge to break it.

 

It’s another minute or so before Jack finally says, “I looked for you, you know.”

 

Bitty stares at him. Jack’s looking at him resolutely, looming over him still on his skates, face serious. Solemn.

 

“I searched your name. You should be careful about giving your full name to strangers, by the way.” Bitty blinks slowly at him, unable to even find the wherewithal to laugh. Jack’s eyes crinkle minutely with amusement before he continues. “Unfortunately there were thousands of results for _Eric Bittle_ , and it was honestly just overwhelming. So I searched _Eric Bittle Georgia_ , which really didn’t help. All that came up was some high school football coach? And then I searched _Eric Bittle travel blog_ , and. Well.” He shuffles on the spot a little, raising a hand to push his sweat-soaked hair back from his forehead. Bitty watches the movement, and can’t help briefly licking his lips. “I didn’t realize it was videos, but I watched them all in one night. And, uh, I was going to send you a message, but… I figured I’d already been creepy and weird enough. And you know…” He lets out a sigh, eyes finally darting away from Bitty’s, expression taking on a resigned tint. “We’d said it was a hook-up.”

 

Bitty isn’t sure where the sound he makes comes from – a near-whine of a noise, something pained and sad. He punctuates it by reaching out to tangle his fingers in Jack’s loose-hanging jersey. Jack lands surprised eyes on him, glancing down to where Bitty is holding him. He wraps his own hand around Bitty’s grip, and for a moment Bitty thinks he means for him to let go, but Jack just clamps his hand tighter.

 

“You should’ve messaged me,” Bitty tells him.

“Really?”

“I tried to –” Bitty breaks off, and steps forward, laying his other hand on Jack’s chest. “I didn’t know your last name. I spent the rest of my summer in Madison, thinkin’ about you and trying to tell myself it was just Athens that I missed. That it was like, nostalgia or wanderlust or something. A memory of something crazy and free I did when I was in Europe.” He smooths his hand over the fabric of Jack’s jersey, feeling the sharp lines of his pads underneath. “But then I saw you playing on TV, and…” he breaks off with a sigh, looking away from Jack’s face to their joined hands, still fisted in the material of Jack’s uniform. “It’s probably super pathetic of me, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what might have been. Silly, right?”

“Not silly.” Jack sounds gruff, sure, his words coming at a murmur that Bitty swears he can feel rumbling where he’s touching Jack.

“Not silly?”

“No,” Jack confirms, and then he’s fitting both palms around Bitty’s jaw and crowding him back against the wall, stooping low and tilting Bitty’s head back to kiss him from the height of his skates. Bitty clutches desperately at his chest, allowing Jack to suck softly at his bottom lip, his kisses lush and slow and measured. Bitty hears himself make a small noise, a slight sigh of a moan, and Jack responds with a near-delicate sweep of his tongue. He keeps it gentle, setting a placid rhythm that Bitty matches, tugging at Jack’s lips with his own and licking between them briefly, just to add moisture. Jack’s beard prickles against his skin, rubbing with each gentle movement of Jack’s mouth, sending the tingling beyond Bitty’s lips. He feels Jack’s fingers tracing along his jaw, his cheekbone, through his hair, and rises to his tiptoes to reach up further to Jack’s height.

 

Jack takes a breath with lips just grazing Bitty’s, adjusting his stance and bending slightly at the knees to press two more kisses to Bitty’s mouth, humming into both of them. He pulls away and straightens, but keeps his hands cradled around Bitty’s face.

“Can I have your number?”

 

Bitty snorts a laugh, ducking his head. “Really, Jack? Do you think I’m gonna say no?”

“Hey, I can’t miss the opportunity again. For like an hour after you left that morning, I was laying in your bed beating myself up over not getting your contact details.”

“Well, you can lord this over past Jack, then. I won’t leave until you’ve got it.”

“Past Jack was a fucking idiot,” Jack replies gravely, accent coming through thick. Bitty wrinkles his nose through another laugh.

“So, what is this then?” he asks, hearing the wobble in his own words. He smooths his hands over Jack’s padded shoulders, maybe an excuse not to look in his face. “A hook-up? Is it a hook-up if it happens more than once? Booty-call, maybe. Fuck buddies.”

 

Jack makes a disgruntled noise, and drops his hands to Bitty’s waist. He uses his grip to pull their bodies flush, Bitty stumbling a little as he’s drawn closer.

“I want to go on a proper date, Bittle. I haven’t been hung up on you for nearly five months because the sex was good.” He hums thoughtfully, and one of his hands wanders briefly down to Bitty’s ass. “Not that it wasn’t. You know, despite being in a dorm bed in a hostel.”

“Oh, god,” Bitty groans. “It was _so_ rude of us. I’m still mortified. So glad I didn’t have to speak to any of the other people in the room in the morning.”

“It was weird. One guy stared at me for a full minute and then said, ‘man, I must’ve been high as fuck yesterday.’ Like, I think he thought you and I were the same person. Another guy legitimately hi-fived me. Everyone else was really unhappy. I don’t think I’ve ever attracted so much negative attention in my life.”

 

Bitty snorts, shaking his head in a way that – dare he say it – already feels _fond_.

“I beg to differ. That goal of yours sure attracted a heck of a lot of ire from the few Blue Jackets fans in the crowd tonight. And, you know, the winning generally.”  
“Okay, sure. Annoying for them. But just imagine you’ve had to listen to two people have really, really satisfying sex in a tiny hostel bed all night. You’d be lying there thinking, ‘how are they doing that? Don’t they know I’m going to be hungover in the morning? I’m all alone and _without_ a hook-up, and no sex I ever have will be as good as what they’re having. They’re so selfish.’”

“It was _that_ good, was it?”

“It was alright,” Jack tells him through a grin, both hands now firmly fixed on Bitty’s ass. “You know, considering the limitations.”

“I thought this _wasn’t_ just about the sex,” Bitty chastises. It’s wholly playful; he retaliates to Jack’s hold by trailing his own hands down Jack’s chest again, not stopping until there’s only material and no padding between their skin.

 

Another one of those silences falls around them, Jack’s grin melting into that warm kind of smile, his eyes sweeping over Bitty’s face as though to memorize every detail.

 

It’s only broken when Bitty feels his phone buzz in his pocket. He sighs.

“I have to go; we’ve got a train to catch.”

“What is this, Bittle? Any means necessary to get as far away from me as possible?” His tone is joking, but there’s a small line between his brows that belies his confidence.

“Only a forty-five-minute drive,” Bitty assures him. “Samwell University.”

Inexplicably, Jack laughs. “Of course you go to Samwell.”

 

The statement is filled with some sort of significance, some ironic acceptance, but before Bitty can query it, his phone buzzes insistently in his pocket again.

“Here,” he says, taking it out and unlocking it, only to open the contacts screen and thrust it at Jack. “Give me your number.”

Jack takes the phone, taps for a moment, and hands it back with a satisfied grimace. “Now I’ve got yours too; I sent myself a message.”

 

Bitty pockets his phone again, and they stand apart from each other, untethered and suspended. Bitty wants to reach out – his phone, however, buzzes a third time.

“Will they please give it a rest?” he mutters angrily, reaching for it again.

“I have to go too.” Jack gestures uselessly behind himself. He is, of course, still wearing his full kit: it seems absurd, now.

“Okay.”

“I want you to stay.”

“Me too.”

 

Bitty bites his lip. Now the idea is out there, now that Jack is the one who suggested it, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to let it go.

“What if,” Jack begins, hesitant, and Bitty looks to him hopefully, “we went on that date now, and I drove you back down afterwards?”

“Tomorrow?”

“Well, uh. Tonight, if you wanted. Or, I guess. Um. Do you want to come back to my place?”

It’s deliberate, Bitty’s sure, so he laughs.

 

“Why, Jack Zimmermann. Are you trying to get me to put out on the second date?”

When Jack laughs too, Bitty is sure: this may be the second date, but there will be many more to follow.

 


	3. or, how to keep your love life a secret when your boyfriend is a minor celebrity

 

Bitty has never woken up so violently as he does in Jack Zimmermann’s bed, the morning after seeing him play in Providence.

 

It’s first a bleary blinking of eyes, a second to take in the weight of an arm across his middle, the warmth of a man at his back, then his first sight of the morning is a sun-bleached leather arm chair tucked in the corner of the room. It all takes a moment, and then Bitty’s jerking back and his heart is racing and he can’t quiet the breath he sucks in so sharply that it devolves into coughs.

 

There’s a grunt from the body behind him, and Jack’s arm tightens around Bitty’s waist. It’s a sleep movement, Bitty’s sudden and dramatic awakening apparently not being enough to rouse Jack from his dreams. Just like in Athens, Jack’s sleeping like the dead and may as well be a press of stones intended to crush Bitty’s life out of him.

 

It’s not wholly uncomfortable.

 

Bitty takes a beat to absorb the vaguely familiar feeling of Jack around him, the completely unfamiliar layout of Jack’s room, and the grey tinge of the predawn light edging through the drawn blinds. It’s early, for sure – so early that Bitty is surprised he feels as awake as he does. He waits for his heart to settle, for his body to adjust to the shock of waking up not in his own bed.

 

They’d intended to nap, nothing over thirty minutes – Bitty was sure he’d set an alarm. He wrestles an arm from under the sheets to grope for his phone on the bedside table. The screen doesn’t light up when he presses the home button, nor when he goes for the power switch.

“Fuck.”

 

Jack snuffles a little, twitching slightly. Bitty stills, allowing him to settle again before turning his panic back to his phone. It’s probably near on four or five in the morning if the weak outside light is anything to go by, and that means he’s been at Jack’s for at least five hours without contacting anyone.

 

Shitty is probably apoplectic.

 

Bitty chews on his lip. He should really cross the Rubicon, seeing as he pretty much dug it himself.

 

Phone still clutched in his hand, he manages to roll over in Jack’s arms, bringing them face to face. In sleep, Jack’s features are lax, mouth parted slightly, everything soft in a way he isn’t when animated. Bitty traces his thumb down Jack’s nose, following the slight crook in it. He runs it beneath Jack’s open lips, over the rough of his beard there. He rubs Jack’s cheekbone, presses a brief kiss to his eyelid.

“Jack,” he says, a bare whisper.

Jack doesn’t move. He tries again, more insistent.

“Jack.”

Nothing.

 

Bitty goes for broke.

 

He pushes at Jack’s shoulder roughly, punctuating it with a forceful “ _Jack,_ wake up!” that gets a small frown forming between Jack’s brows. Bitty keeps shaking him until, finally, his eyes squint open.

“Bittle,” he grunts, hardly a word, dissatisfaction clear.

“It’s morning.”

“No.” Jack closes his eyes again.

“Get _up_ – my phone’s dead and I need to go home.”

“ _No_.” Eyes still closed, Jack tugs at Bitty’s waist again, curling their bodies together and pushing his face into the crook of Bitty’s neck. Bitty registers the press of Jack’s lips at the exposed skin of his shoulder, and can’t help the sound he makes. It takes all his strength – psychological and physical – to push Jack away. Free of Jack’s hold, he makes to slide out of bed, accidentally pulling the sheet with him. It’s as ungraceful an action as he could possibly make, resulting in him hopping a little once upright, trying to disentangle himself. He gives up and just yanks harder on the sheet, resolving to just take it.

 

A look back to Jack finds him watching Bitty with drowsy eyes and a hint of a smile, lying on his side uncovered and unashamed. He draws a hand lazily down his own stomach, scratching with sluggish fingers at the trail of hair beneath his belly button. The movement serves to draw Bitty’s eyes down; he clutches his sheet a bit tighter on seeing what Jack’s _not_ touching.

“Well, some parts of you are awake at least.”

“Early riser,” Jack mumbles, hand moving more deliberately across his stomach now. Under Bitty’s gaze, his half-hard dick twitches. Bitty huffs a laugh.

“I need to be home before any of my teammates wake up so I can pretend I was in my dorm all along. I don’t have time for this.”

“So I’m a _this_ now.” Jack’s voice comes through less slurred, more alive.

“You’re expecting a lot on a second date is what you are.”

 

It’s Jack’s turn to laugh, but he does it while sitting up and lurching to his feet. Bitty watches with unconcealed fascination as he crosses with heavy steps to his closet, disappearing inside.

“Let’s get you home, then,” he says from within.

 

Bitty pads after him, sheet still gathered around him and trailing like a toga, and leans against the doorway. Jack has already pulled on a pair of sweats, head hidden in a t-shirt.

“You know,” Bitty begins, following the journey of the fabric as Jack draws it down over his chest, “I can’t very well go home in the same shirt as yesterday. Especially considering what you did to me while I was wearing it. It’s all… sweaty.”

Pulling a roll of socks from a drawer, Jack throws Bitty a raised eyebrow. “Sweaty, eh?”

“Completely gross. Just, absolutely sticky and, like, practically unwearable.”

Jack hums, a clear grin fighting its way onto his lips. Straightening after affixing his socks to his feet, he takes a shirt from a nearby shelf.

 

It’s a flannel, dark red plaid, and when Bitty drops his sheet and pulls it on, it covers him to mid-thigh.

 

Bitty makes work of rolling the sleeves up to his elbows, arranging the cuffs deliberately and carefully. When he looks back to Jack, now standing in a pair of yellow tennis shoes and watching Bitty with dark eyes and a firm set to his mouth.

“Put your pants on.”

 

Laughter trills out of Bitty’s mouth. If he turns around before bending slowly to scoop the fallen sheet off the floor, it’s only for efficiency. The vague groan behind Jack’s answering chuckle has nothing to do with it.

“You need to go home.”

“Yup.” Bitty pops the _p_ as he tugs his jeans over his thighs, having already retrieved his discarded underwear. He figures avoiding denim chafing his dick is worth wearing the same ones two days in a row. He sits on the bed to tie his shoes, Jack leaning in the closet doorway with folded arms.

“If I don’t take you home now, I’ll never do it.” He seems to be telling himself as much as he’s telling Bitty.

“I do believe that’s called _kidnapping_ , Mr. Zimmermann.”

“Not a third date?”

“Is the second one over yet?”

 

Keeping his useless phone in his hand, Bitty meets Jack’s eyes expectantly. When Jack shakes his head, it seems a little dazed. The smile that tugs at his lips is disbelieving.

“You’re something else, Bittle.”

“I don’t think I’ve been told that in that particular tone before. Watch yourself – sounds mighty like you’re lookin’ to _defile_ me.”

Jack laughs again, hanging his head and pushing off from the doorway to cross the room.

“You need to go _home_.”

 

* * *

 

They pull up a few buildings down from Bitty’s dorm in Jack’s truck, a little after six thirty. They’re both laughing, Bitty having given Jack a thorough dressing-down for his reluctance to listen to anything except the oldies radio station, and Jack insisting that every singer on the pop station was Taylor Swift. Still, Bitty’s delighted giggles die in his throat when he catches sight of Shitty, perched on the steps of the dorm building, hair a wild mess and looking close to tears.

“Oh, shit. Oh _no_. Oh my god, I’m a terrible person.”

“Huh?” Jack hasn’t noticed Shitty yet, is looking at Bitty across the center console with light in his eyes and a smile still about his lips. Bitty gestures through the windshield.

 

Jack follows Bitty’s hand and takes in the sight of Shitty – who seems yet to notice the car that has pulled up with Bitty inside it.  
“Ah. Friend of yours?”  
Bitty nods. “Yeah – um, yes. He was at the game with me last night. _Fuck_ , he’s probably been beside himself. I – just, I won’t say anything to him, but don’t leave yet? Just let me talk to him first, and then I’ll get rid of him. _Please_ don’t leave yet.”

 

Jack frowns at him minutely, but also answers with a firm nod. Bitty presses his lips together in something of a grimace before turning away and clambering out of the car. He waits until he’s away from Jack’s car before calling out, “Shitty.”

 

Shitty snaps to attention, meerkat on the savannah, and on clapping eyes on Bitty follows the movement through to standing. He doesn’t run, but he does employ purposeful strides to close the distance between them, pulling Bitty into his arms firmly once he’s within reach. Bitty wraps his arms around Shitty’s back, remorse flooding through him with unmistakable intensity.

 

“Bits, _fuck_. I was losing my fucking mind. Holy shit – you’re okay?”  
Bitty nods against Shitty’s chest, patting his back consolingly. “I’m fine, Shitty. I’m so sorry – I let my phone die, and I didn’t think –”

“Damn fucking right you didn’t think.” He shifts his grip to Bitty’s shoulders, using the hold to hold him at arms’ length and survey him with hard eyes. “I get it: you’re an adult, you spent a year travelling and you didn’t have to check in with people. But Jesus Christ, Bits, I told everyone you’d be back on the train after us. I convinced them it’d be fine.”  
Bitty swallows. “I guess I’m just not used to having people waitin’ on me. I am _so_ sorry, Shitty.”

 

Shitty presses his lips together firmly, and shakes his head. “It’s not exactly fine, but I accept that apology. I was tearing my hair out, fucking hell. Somewhere around the tenth phone call, I started wondering if I should call the fuzz.”  
Bitty blinks at him. “You… you didn’t, right?”  
“I got close, but those fuckers wouldn’t do anything for under forty-eight hours, probably. It’s not like you’re a kid.”  
“Who _did_ you call?”

“Lardo. I didn’t really relish the thought of Holster punching me in the face when he found out I’d lost Samwell’s favorite frog. I told Ransom you’d texted you were back in your dorm.”  
“So… you and Lardo. You’re the only ones who know I wasn’t there?”

“Yeah.” Shitty narrows his eyes. “Did you do something illegal? Bitty, did you kill a man?”

Bitty hits him lightly on the arm. “Stop that. If you must know, I –” he fights the urge to look over his shoulder, knowing that Jack’s car is still there, knowing Jack is probably watching – “I hooked up with someone, and I just don’t want to get chirped about it until I die.”

 

The remains of Shitty’s concern melt almost instantly, a borderline-gleeful openness taking over his face. “You hooked up? With a _man_ , Eric Richard Bitty Bittle? I do declare, I am _scandalized_.” The accent Shitty affects would be marginally offensive, if Bitty weren’t so set on making sure he doesn’t look up the street and see Jack’s car. “You know I need deets. I’ve earned them, after staying up all night and worrying about you.”

Despite himself, Bitty laughs and pats his arm.

 

“I suppose it’s the least I can do. I will give you a _mild_ amount of deets, if you let me just thank… um, thank the driver.” He wrestles his wallet out of his pocket, extracts his dorm keycard, and hands it to Shitty. “Go up. I have a pie in my minifridge.”

He’s a little surprised, honestly, that it works; he’d almost been expecting to work harder to convince Shitty to go inside to allow him give Jack a proper farewell. The pie seems to clinch the deal. As he watches Shitty practically run into the building, hollering gratitude over his shoulder, Bitty lets out a toe-deep sigh.

 

He shakes himself a little, and scrubs a hand down his face, before turning to scuff back to Jack’s car.

 

He all but falls into the passenger seat again, groaning stiffly. When he turns to look at Jack, he finds he’s being watched with wolf-like intensity.  
“That looked like… a lot.”  
Bitty snorts. “Shitty is – he’s a good friend. He cares a bunch.”  
“A friend?”  
Bitty squints at him. Jack seems to hear his own words in echo, and something in his expression drops.

“I didn’t mean –”

“No, I know. I know how he looks. He’s kind of, uh. Tactile, I guess?”

“It’s none of my business.”

Bitty frowns. “You’re right; it’s not, really. But, um. I’m kind of a one-man sort of boy, I think? So, I mean.” He swallows, and finds his eyes roaming over Jack’s face: the uncertain grimace about his mouth, the vague anticipation in his brow. Bitty offers a tentative smile in return. “If you wanted to go on a third date, you’d be the only one I’m doing that with.”

“Oh.” Bitty watches Jack’s Adam’s apple bob up and down, watches his tiny twitching smile become something with more abandon, watches as he shifts in his seat to turn his body towards Bitty. He reaches an arm to grip at the headrest of Bitty’s seat, and leans forward a little. “I want that. Yes. Third date. And, uh… I wouldn’t see anyone else either.”

 

Bitty fights his grin, nodding in a way he hopes comes across as none-too-eager and only vaguely interested. He makes a noise of nonchalant agreeance that sounds forced, even to him.  
“I mean, if you wanted, you could… um. I mean, you don’t have to feel obligated, or.”

“No. No, I want to date you.”

 

Jack sounds sure, and warm, and it feels natural when Bitty leans across the console to capture his mouth in a kiss. Jack makes a small sound, almost like a grunt, and brings his free hand to Bitty’s neck. As Bitty bites lightly at his bottom lip, and as Jack responds by delving his tongue into Bitty’s mouth, Jack’s hand travels down Bitty’s chest, fisting in the collar of his shirt – Jack’s own shirt, which he seems to remember, and enjoy, if the way he sucks on Bitty’s tongue is any indication. Bitty brings his own hands to Jack’s face, tracing fingers into his beard. Jack’s hand drops to his hip, grips in, and applies pressure in a way that suggests he’s hinting toward Bitty crawling into his lap.

 

Normally, Bitty would not be averse. However, the specter of Shitty waiting up in his dorm, anticipating deets after a breezy goodbye to a Lyft driver, pulls him down. He hears himself whimper slightly as he leans away, which Jack answers to by trying to chase his lips.

“Shitty’s waiting for me.”

Jack hums, leaning back into his seat, but not before letting his touch linger on Bitty’s body. “Go. I’ll talk to you later. We’ve got a date to organize.”

 

Bitty huffs a laugh, and throws Jack a wink as he gets out of the car, and makes sure to swing his hips a little more than usual as he walks toward his dorm building.

 

* * *

 

Shitty had been easy to pacify: Bitty told him that after meeting Jack Zimmermann – somehow, to Shitty, the least exciting part of the story – he’d gone to an all-night diner (true), and had talked to a very handsome man (also true). They’d eaten a very late dinner together (still true – breakfast-for-dinner for Jack, and a grilled cheese for Bitty), then Bitty had agreed to go back to his apartment (definitely true), and they had had some wholly satisfying sex (unbelievably, inescapably true). He told Shitty that they’d fallen asleep, and that he’d set an alarm, but his phone had clearly run out of battery.

 

“I can at least be proud,” Shitty had said, “that while I was here ready to tear my damn moustache out with my bare hands, you were getting _bus-ay_ with some anonymous hunk.”

 

Full of pie and grinning smugly, Shitty had departed with one last nugget of wisdom: “You might want to put some A&D on that beard burn, brah.”

 

The difficult thing proved to be travelling to Providence to see Jack without attracting the curiosity of his friends.

 

Their third date could only happen on a weeknight, Jack having a two-day break from games and Bitty not having a class until one on Thursdays. He fed something to the team about treating himself to a fancy dinner-for-one, and it had worked – also serving to explain why he turned up to their late-afternoon practice the next day with a splitting grin on his face – but that excuse was probably single use only. The dorms, at least, give him a certain degree of separation: living in the Haus would surely have been like living in some sort of foot-scented and beer-soaked nanny state.

 

He and Jack try to make it weekly, and Skype at least every second day besides that, but then Jack goes on a West Coast roadie and after that Bitty has to hole up performing an imitation of study for midterms, and two weeks of actual dates go un-kept.

 

Despite talking to Jack every day of those two weeks, Bitty feels missing him like a stone in his gut. He posts an old photo from Athens on Instagram, and captions it _#tbt my glamorous life of travel. Oh won’t some boy sweep me away again!_

 

At their Wednesday bubble tea session, Chowder eyes him warily. It’s easy enough to ignore while Bitty’s nattering about dibs and whether or not they’ll get tapped – “Now, I know it’s high competition this year, because there’s only _one_ room up for grabs, and seeing as it’s Shitty’s I do feel like Lardo has an unfair advantage” – but then Bitty mentions maybe living off-campus next year, and Chowder outright winces, and Bitty has to stop.

 

“What was that?”

“Huh? What? Nothing.” Chowder’s eyes are wide. He takes a gulp of his bubble tea with badly affected innocence. Bitty squints at him.

“You can’t pull the wool over my eyes, Christopher Chow. What did I say?”

Chowder gnaws at his lip for a moment, and his gaze darts desperately to the door, and then he blurts out, “You can’t leave.”

Bitty gapes. “And who on this great green Earth said I was?”

“You just – I mean, it’s not just me who thinks so, Bitty. We’re all worried.”

“Who all? Y’all been talking about me behind my back?”

“We’re _worried_ ,” Chowder says again, broadly earnest and with a significant look. “Shitty spilled the beans about what happened after the Falcs game –”

“ _That boy_ ,” Bitty curses, but Chowder steamrolls on.

“—and that’s not the only time. You think I haven’t noticed, Bitty? I mean, it’s your business! But, you keep going missing, and you keep talking about travelling, and like no-one’s going to stop you if you want to go back to Europe, but we all just… wish you wouldn’t.”

 

Bitty stares at him a little longer, and sincerely hopes it passes when he snorts with affected derision. “Good Lord, that’s sweet of you. But I swear, I haven’t been lyin’. I’ve been visiting my cousin at Brown.”

Chowder hums, and narrows his eyes, and takes another sip of bubble tea. It’s a long sip. A few black pearls shoot up the straw, though he doesn’t blink for the whole duration. Bitty feels something prick up on the back of his neck.

“ _Fine_ ,” he finds himself saying, and Chowder breaks with a grin and hisses, “yes!”

 

“You abuse your ability to disarm people,” Bitty tells him. Chowder just raises his eyebrows.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Bitty. People just like talking to me.”

Bitty shakes his head. “I feel used. But okay, Chowder, _you can’t tell anyone_. Especially Shitty, because he apparently can’t keep a damn secret to save his stupid self.” Chowder nods solemnly, as though he hadn’t just tricked Bitty into committing to reveal a potentially chirp-attracting secret. “I’ve been dating someone. Someone in Providence.”

Chowder grins, and makes a little affected gasp. “You’ve got a boyfriend?” He keeps his voice low, conspiratorial. Bitty appreciates it.

“ _No_ , I said I’m dating someone. We haven’t quite… well.”

“DTR.”

Bitty frowns. “What?”

“DTR: _Defined the Relationship_. Me and Farmer did that after like the fourth date – but that’s _us_. You don’t have to compare, or whatever. She was all like, ‘So I don’t want to date anyone else,’ and then I was like, ‘I don’t want to date anyone else either!’ And _bam_. Relationship.” He spreads his hands demonstratively. Bitty’s frown deepens.

“Oh, we’ve had that conversation. Neither of us are seeing other people.”

 

Chowder’s grin spreads. “ _Bitty’s got a boyfriend_ ,” he sing-songs, though it’s still whispered. Bitty swats at him, and takes a gulp of his own bubble tea.

 

The feel of missing Jack still sits in him, like a stone.

 

* * *

 

“…and, uh, I did one of those white-water rafting things, through this fjord and it was like – Bits, it was like a whole other world. I couldn’t take photos because, well, _rafting_ , but it’s probably a good thing because my GM would’ve killed me herself if she knew I was doing extreme sports. They asked me what I did in New Zealand, and I was like, ‘oh, you know. Kiwi bird sanctuary. Scenic boat rides.’”

 

Bitty blinks at him, registering Jack’s expectant look. A moment passes before he realizes he should probably make some reply.

 

Truthfully, he hadn’t been entirely listening; he’d been watching the shifts in Jack’s expression, the occasional smirk of his mouth, the way his eyes dart down when he smiles. The slight one-sided dimple. The absent gesturing of his hands, the easy movement of reaching out to touch Bitty as he speaks, the unthinking way he rubs at his own beard.

 

And now, the vague crease between his brows.

“Am I boring you?”

He says it dry, a tone Bitty is familiar with as Jack joking, but there’s also something truly questioning in it. Bitty scrambles to put that fire out.  
“ _No_ , oh my goodness honey, not at all. I’m loving the, uh…” Bitty’s voice climbs as Jack’s eyebrow does, reaching a pitch that he hadn’t even known he was capable of. He clears his throat, pressing a hand to his now-flaming cheek as Jack regards him with a wry smile.

 

“Now do you want that drink?” Jack inclines his head toward his kitchen, and though he’s still holding the humor in his expression, there’s something pinched and tense around his eyes. Bitty isn’t sure his throat is working yet, so he just nods.

 

Rather than walking around the couch, Jack just rises up to standing on the cushions and steps over the back to the split-level landing, cuffs of his sweatpants scuffing a little as he pads to the next room.

 

On the television, there’s a movie playing – something with teenagers, shot in a soft-focus and with a lot of close-ups that are lit in artistic ways. It hadn’t been on when Bitty had arrived. Jack had muted it and put on music, meaning now that Bitty gets to watch two polished and styled twenty year olds engage in a polished and styled kiss, while some sort of mellow 70s track plays over Jack’s speakers. The girl in the film bites the boy’s bottom lip between her teeth, and Bitty bites his own.

 

A glass of water edges into Bitty’s peripheral vision. He starts, and looks up to find Jack leaning over the back of the couch and regarding him with an unconcealed frown.  
“Are you okay?”  
“I’m fine.” Bitty takes the glass. He raises it to his lips, and then suddenly over half of it is gone. In the movie, the adults-masquerading-as-teens are lying on grass, touching each other’s faces.  
“I, uh. I don’t want to pry, but – I’ve got to be honest, Bits. You’re making me a little nervous right now.”

 

Jack carefully drops back onto the couch next to him, but this time with a noticeable distance between them. His eyes still have their pinched look. His pupils are pinpricks.

 

Bitty gulps down the rest of his water, and leans forward to slide the empty glass on to the coffee table. He resettles himself facing Jack, legs drawn up underneath his body, and shuffles slightly closer. From their position on his knees, his fingers brush at the seam of Jack’s sweats. Bitty gives in to the touch, and traces the line of fabric with his fingertips.

 

He’s stalling, and Jack’s tension is filtering through his whole body.

 

“I think there’s something we should talk about.”  
Jack’s eyes widen impossibly, and he sucks in a sharp breath, and his lips start to form Bitty’s name. Bitty lays his whole hand on Jack’s thigh, and intones, “Let me say what I need to. Please.” Jack keeps looking at him like he’s a horse about to bolt, and nods jerkily.

 

“I promise this isn’t bad. At least, I don’t think this is bad. But it’s just – this has been happening a little while, right? A couple months, now. And I’m not seeing anyone else, and you’re not seeing anyone else, and I was just thinkin’, I guess – or, or wonderin’, more like. About what it is. Um. About what _this_ is. What we’re doing.”  
Jack’s mouth works soundlessly for a moment, brow drawn down again, eyes flitting across Bitty’s face. When he does manage to speak, he blurts, “I’m your boyfriend.”

 

It’s Bitty’s turn to gasp.

 

“But we talked about this already.” Jack says it slow, deliberate, as he reaches out to lay his own hand over Bitty’s leg. “Remember? That morning after the game you came to – we said we weren’t seeing other people.”  
“You didn’t say ‘boyfriend!’” His voice is high again. He tries to clear his throat.  
“I – Bits, I mean. We’re exclusive. What else would that be? ‘The guy I’m dating’?” Jack’s slight smirk is back, though it’s tinged with bewilderment. Bitty folds his arms.  
“I mean, that was completely open to interpretation, so I don’t think you can blame me for –”

 

He cuts off with a noise not unlike a squawk as Jack leans over and, with one arm around Bitty’s waist and one hand clamped on his knee, pulls him messily across the couch. Bitty ends up haphazardly thrown over Jack’s lap, perched sideways across his thighs.  
“Bits,” Jack breathes, nosing into his temple and pressing a kiss to his cheekbone.  
“Yes, Jack?”  
“Be my boyfriend?”  
Bitty experiences the acute feeling of his stomach lifting and dropping, like on a rollercoaster.

 

“Well, I thought you already were.”  
“Is that a yes?” Jack’s kiss is now a smile, still against Bitty’s face, voice vibrating through his skin.  
“See, I just don’t know. Apparently I’ve been seeing this one boy for _months_ , and he’s a star hockey player, you know. Devastatingly handsome. Rugged, and – and athletic. He can just pick me right up and throw me over his shoulder.”

 

From his newly-acquired position thrown over Jack’s shoulder, it’s easy for Bitty to slap playfully at Jack’s ass as he gets taken down the corridor. He gets a slap to his own ass for his troubles, and is tossed laughing onto Jack’s bed, and with Jack plastered over his body, it’s also easy to pretend the new title of _boyfriend_ doesn’t come with the caveat of _secret_.

 

* * *

 

Bitty blurts it out after team breakfast at the Haus, just as he’s about to go to class.

 

“Just so’s y’all know, my boyfriend’s coming to dinner tonight!”

 

He doesn’t wait for reactions, or fallout, just swings his satchel over his shoulder and charges into the street. He keeps his pace at a trot and definitely doesn’t look back until he’s settled in amongst the crowd of his lecture. His phone buzzes the whole time; he probably shouldn’t have worried about being followed, seeing as his friends could humiliate him well enough via the group chat. For the first time in a long time, Bitty deliberately turns his phone off.

 

The lecture is a place to sit. Bitty takes out his notebook, and does try to take notes. He has new colored pens, good for subheadings and organizing sections. There are two different blues – one sort of crystalline and chilled, and one that’s a bit deeper and almost warmer. It looks good with the soft yellow highlighter. It looks better in a heart shape, with _#1_ written in the center.

 

Bitty shakes himself.

 

The past few weeks, the team had been passing significant looks around him. They had been making a lot of breakfast plans, and turning up to his dorm a lot of early mornings. Chowder particularly had taken to ambushing him after class, or in Founders, or at practice, just to hiss “who’s your boyfriend?” in a would-be-innocent way. Ransom had pulled Bitty aside more than once to tell him, with a low and calming Captain’s voice, “you know we’ve got your back, right? You can tell us anything you need to.”

 

Bitty had complained to Jack, draped dramatically across his lap with a glass of wine in hand, and Jack had only laughed and replied, “I’d love to meet them.”

 

There was Bitty choking on his wine, and days of exhaustive back-and-forth that shredded every _what if_ that shook itself from the recesses of Bitty’s brain. There was Jack ringing him at midnight and letting the call sit with dead air for a long time (seconds, and minutes, and prickled endless moments) after muttering “Bitty” in a voice dry and wracked. There were jokes about NDAs, and some musing over threatening to withhold baked goods, but ultimately –

 

“Excuse me.” Bitty’s neighbor stands patiently. The rest of the lecture hall are vacating their own seats. Bitty’s notebook is covered in blue and yellow hearts.

 

He tucks his legs under his chair, and allows the girl next to him to pass, his face curled into what is supposed to be an apologetic grimace. Bitty sits until the room clears out, returning his pens and useless notes to his bag with resigned passivity.

 

The day trundles as Bitty floats from Annie’s, to Founders, to the dining hall, to the Quad. He doesn’t turn his phone back on, and his fingertips develop a papery dryness from being rubbed repeatedly on his jeans. His mouth gets the dryness too, and his core twitches even when he’s sitting still.

 

It may have something to do with the five coffees.

 

When the sun finally starts to pull down in the sky – or at least appears to, in the timeless hellhole Bitty has damned himself to – he draws his phone from his pocket and turns it back on.

 

The text and group chat notifications are expected. Additionally, though, there is a missed call from Jack. It’s recent, from barely a minute ago, and Bitty’s thumb is hovering over the redial button when a message comes through: _I think they’ve seen me sitting here and are coming outside._

 

Bitty is on Lake Quad. The Haus is at least a ten-minute walk away.

 

He breaks into a sprint.

 

* * *

 

Bitty’s breaths are coming harsh when he skids to a stop in front of the Haus. His satchel is hugged to his chest; he had wrestled out of the strap to stop it wildly swinging behind him and slowing him down. His hair has been blown back from his forehead, and is probably in some state of horrendous disarray. His legs are shaky, but that is unlikely to be anything to do with a few minutes’ running. They nearly give out completely when he lays eyes on Jack, standing in front of Shitty, at the bottom of the porch steps. They both have their arms folded.

 

Bitty emits a strangled yelp. They look over to him. He drops his satchel.

 

“Bitty! Stay over there. Legit, bruh, don’t come closer – this guy’s fucking _crazy_.” He holds up a calming hand in Bitty’s direction, and takes a few measured strides in his flip-flops to put himself between Jack and Bitty on the path. Jack sighs, and rolls his eyes.

“Bittle, he’s – I didn’t say anything, but he’s not listening –”

“Because you’re a GD psycho, Zimmermann! You think because you talked to him in some random ‘give back to the fans’ meet-and-greet, you get to fucking stalk him?” Shitty’s closer now, still using himself as a shield against Jack’s supposed threat. He addresses Bitty, but keeps his eyes warily trained on Jack. “He said he was here to see you, and I was like, _well that’s creepy as shit_. The fucking entitlement of this dude, Jesus.” He raises his voice at Jack again. “Unless you want ‘Jack Zimmermann is a sleaze who stalks college students’ all over the news, I suggest you get to fuck, you piece of shit.”

 

“Shitty, _no_.” Bitty makes to push past him, but gets held back by a secure hand on his arm. “I told you, my boyfriend was coming for dinner.”

“Shit, you did – you hear that, Zimmermann?” He raises his voice again, aggression coming through every word. “He’s got a boyfriend.”

Jack still has his arms folded, shoulders gone tense and jaw locked, even from a few feet away.

“Will you _keep your voice down_ ,” Bitty hisses, yanking his arm from Shitty’s grip. “And just come inside with us so I can explain.”

Shitty frowns. “No. No, fuck that. I don’t care if his arms are the size of my thighs; that stalkery prick isn’t coming in my Haus.”

“Calm yourself,” Bitty snaps. At least the jitters of his nerves are gone; the heat in his face now is fueled only by irritation. “And listen to what I’m saying: I asked him here. I asked Jack Zimmermann to come here.” Shitty opens his mouth to retort, so Bitty holds up a silencing finger. “I asked _my boyfriend_ Jack Zimmermann to come here. For dinner. And to meet my friends, but that seems unlikely because I’m not entirely sure I have any, actually.”

Shitty’s jaw slackens as Bitty talks, and his eyes widen slightly. Thankfully, he says nothing. Bitty nods.

“Now, regardless of your wishes, my _boyfriend_ and I are going into the Haus, and we are going to cook dinner for the team, and I am going to introduce him to everyone else. And none of them are going to make me regret being honest with y’all.”

 

He bends to scoop his satchel from the path, and approaches Jack with the straightest back he can manage. He murmurs a “hi, sugar” as he passes, skipping up the steps to edge the door open. Jack, thankfully, takes the hint and trails after him.

 

The door barely swings shut behind him before Bitty whirls around and all but smashes his face into Jack’s chest. He groans, long and loud, and Jack pats his back with a consoling hum.

“I’m sorry my friend thought you were a stalker.”

Jack snorts a laugh. “I’m sorry I turned up early.” He switches from patting Bitty’s back to stroking his hair, and continues with a broadly dry tone. “Though if I was going to stalk someone, it would definitely be you.”

Bitty jerks upright and shoves at him lightly. “Oh my _god_ , you’re ridiculous.”

 

Jack just smiles at him, and rubs a hand over his beard.

“Hi. Thanks for saving me from your friend.” He steps forward, and lays hands on Bitty’s hips, ducking his head suggestively.

“Hi. Thanks for coming.” Bitty fits a hand to Jack’s neck, and pulls him down the extra small distance to bring their lips together.

 

The kiss is soft, almost gentle, and it’s only a moment before Jack hums against Bitty’s mouth and lets go of his hip to cradle his cheek.

 

It isn’t going to go anywhere – nothing more than a ‘hello’ kiss – but they are still interrupted by a loud and unrestrained “ _man_ ” from the stairway, followed by a peal of mildly hysterical laughter.

 

Bitty pulls back. Lardo and Ransom hover, about midway up: Lardo, with a would-be mildly-raised eyebrow; Ransom, with a bared-teeth grin. The finger Bitty holds up to them is a warning.

“No. Hush. No one says _anything_ until I have a plate of food in my hand. So either y’all get your butts in the kitchen and help me fix this chicken ravioli, or you turn right around go back up those stairs until I call you down.”

Lardo shrugs, and hops down the final few steps without a word. Ransom mutters something that sounds suspiciously like “you don’t even live here,” but follows without further complaint.

 

Lardo is taking delight in rubbing herb marinade into chicken breasts, and Jack is stoically halving cherry tomatoes as Ransom stands staring at him, frozen with his own knife, when Shitty deigns to return from the outside. Bitty looks over from the ball of pasta dough he is wrapping to rest, and find Shitty watching with a shamefaced expression.

“Make yourself useful; get a skillet and cook off those tomatoes that Jack has chopped.”

Shitty blinks at him, but complies without a word.

 

It’s when the kitchen is filled with the smell of cooking tomatoes and onions, and a tin of purée has been added to the skillet to reduce, that Shitty finally speaks.

“Zimmermann, man, that uh – good game. That game last night, you – uh. That was a clutch shot, in the last period. Um.” He coughs, and runs thumb and forefinger over his moustache. Bitty stares; the reticence, coming from Shitty, seems thoroughly incongruous. “Fuckin’ filthy,” he adds, almost an afterthought, tone oddly formal.

“Oh, _that’s_ where you’re from.” Lardo’s voice comes through loud and sarcastic. Jack smirks, fleetingly, before turning to face Shitty completely and offering his hand.

 

“Thanks, buddy. That’s a good crumb-catcher you got there.” He wryly gestures to his own top lip, and Bitty rolls his eyes. Shitty, though, emits a surprised squawk of a laugh and shakes Jack’s hand through an alarmed smile.

 

They eat while standing, each cradling a bowl of the fresh ravioli, ladled over with the tomato sauce. Holster had arrived from class when Bitty was dishing up, and now stands next to Ransom with stiff posture and a furrowed brow.

 

Jack finishes eating first, depositing his bowl in the sink and leaning to press a kiss to Bitty’s temple.

“Really good, Bits,” he murmurs, and Ransom sucks in a breath around a mouthful and devolves into a coughing fit. Holster slaps him on the back, and through the thumping he chokes out two words: “beard burn.”

 

Shitty’s reaction is the most dramatic: a sudden, near-screamed “fuck!” and an indicting finger pointed directly at Bitty. Lardo, on the other hand, just snickers quietly into her bowl. Bitty sets aside his own dinner and folds his arms.

“Now I don’t know what you _think_ you know –”

“You!” Ransom cuts in, eyes still streaming, but apparently recovered enough from his near-asphyxiation to throw around accusations. “You said, when you were in Europe, that some – some Sven or Giorgios or Pasquale whatever-the-fuck – that you got beard burn just before you left, and you had to lie and say it was heat rash.”

 

Bitty opens his mouth, but his brain hasn’t caught up yet. He’s probably doing a passable imitation of a fish, the way his mouth is soundlessly working.

 

“Actually, it was a Jacques.” Jack says this monotonously, unaffected and for all appearances unsuggestive, and Bitty feels suddenly as though his face could just about explode.

 

The silence that follows rings with its heaviness, Bitty finding himself leaning slightly closer to Jack as his friends’ faces wash over blank.

 

Lardo is the first to break, snorting loudly and intoning a borderline-reverent “dude” before sliding from her seat on the kitchen counter and crossing to dump her bowl in the sink.

“And I only came back from travelling with a haircut and permanent sunstroke. Kudos, Bits.” She throws him a mild salute, and he tries to inject every ounce of gratitude that he feels into the smile he throws back.

 

The boys crack simultaneously, shattering into a resounding chorus of hollers, crashing laughter, and swearing. They nudge each other, and grin suggestively at Bitty with waggling eyebrows, and somehow Holster’s half-eaten bowl of pasta goes tumbling to the floor.

 

Bitty groans. “I’m not dealing with this. I cooked, and I don’t even live here. You can deal with that, and consider whether you want to behave like human beings. We’ll be out back.” He fits a firm hand around Jack’s elbow and all but drags him from the room, ignoring the reprise of sleazy comments, and Ransom’s muttered “you don’t _even_ live here.”

 

Bitty leads Jack out the back of the house and into the yard. There is a tattered collection of lawn chairs, and a trash can that they had been using for a bonfire a few nights previous, but not much else. Bitty takes up position leaning against one of the columns, and folds his arms.

“I hope you’re happy; your funny little quip will doubtlessly have me being berated and harangued about my love life for the foreseeable future. Until I _die_ , in all likelihood. Did you want me to die of shame? Because if so, mission _well_ accomplished.”

Jack scoffs a laugh, and plants his hand by Bitty’s head to enable him to loom closer.

“I’m more sorry than you will ever know.”

“Why don’t I believe you, huh?”

“Let me make it up to you.” Jack leans even closer, rubbing their noses together for the barest moment. “Let me take you somewhere.”

 

Bitty’s resolve shatters, and he can’t help but reach out to snag fingers around Jack’s belt loops and pull his body closer.

“You gonna take me on some kind of fancy date?”

Jack hums, and shakes his head minutely. “No – a bit longer than a date. I was thinking… two weeks? Maybe three?”

“You want to go somewhere for three weeks?” Bitty pushes at Jack’s hips a little, trying to allow himself the space to regard Jack’s expression properly. Jack obliges and shuffles back, but his face reveals nothing but earnestness. Honesty.

“You know I travel when the season finishes. It’s either – ah, celebration or commiseration.” Bitty nods. “We’ve only got a few weeks left. Even if we go all the way – your semester is over soon; I’ll need to get away. I want you with me.”

 

Bitty laughs, a weird near-shout of a sound. Jack seems unaffected by it, his only response being a slight raising of his brows.

“You want to take me on a vacation?”

“I want you to come on a vacation with me. The logistics, uh – we can talk about it. I don’t want you feeling, um –”

Bitty cuts him off. Logistics don’t matter, in this moment: what does matter is that in the dull yellow of the porch light, Jack’s cheekbones are coming through sharper. His hair is catching the light and shining the barest hint of gold in the brown, and with the shadows being cast across his face, it’s almost as though he’s lit by fire on one side, skin almost blue from the moon on the other. What does matter is that Bitty can reach up and trace fingertips over Jack’s whiskered cheeks to cup his jaw, and rise on his toes to stop Jack’s words with a kiss. What does matter is that Bitty’s friends are inside, and Jack is here, and they are making plans to be together, in the sun, just like the first time.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed it. Feel free to comment/share if you did! (*¯ ³¯*)♡


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